Hurricane forces Haiti refugees to flee again

HURRICANE Tomas flooded the earthquake- shattered remains of a Haitian town yesterday, forcing families who had already lost their homes in one disaster to flee another.

In the country’s capital, quake refugees resisted calls to abandon flimsy tarpaulin and tent camps.

Driving winds and a storm surge battered Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince that was near the epicentre of the January 12 earthquake and was 90% destroyed.

Dozens of families in one earthquake refuge camp carried their belongings through thigh-high water to a taxi post on high ground, waiting out the rest of the storm under blankets and a sign that read “Welcome to Leogane.”

“We got flooded out and we’re just waiting for the storm to pass. There’s nothing we can do,” said Johnny Joseph, a 20-year-old resident.

The growing hurricane with 85m/h (140km/h) winds was battering the western tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula and the cities of Jeremie and Les Cayes.

One man drowned while trying to ford a river in an SUV in the rural area of Grand-Anse, said civil protection official Pierre Andre. The hurricane had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.

The centre of the storm was about 140 miles (230 km) west of Port-au-Prince, draping charcoal clouds over the city. Steady rain turned the streets of the capital into flowing canals.

Farther north in Gonaives, a coastal city twice inundated by recent tropical storms, police evacuated more than 200 inmates from one prison to another.

Aid workers are concerned the storm will worsen Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 440 people and hospitalised more than 6,700 others.

In Leogane, an earthquake camp suddenly became an island as floodwater surged around it, stranding hundreds of people in their tents.

Closer to the shore, water poured into the Leogane home of Abdul Khafid, swirling around the furniture. His family grabbed its most important items — birth certificates, a radio and a computer — and headed to their mosque to spend the night.

Haiti’s civil protection department had urged people living in camps for the 1.3 million Haitians made homeless by the earthquake to go to the homes of friends and family.

But many ignored the advice, fearing their few possessions might be stolen or they might even be denied permission to return when the storm is over.

Most of Haiti’s post-quake homeless live under donated plastic tarpaulins on open fields. Much is private land, where they have been constantly fighting eviction. A September report from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said 29% of 1,268 camps studied had been closed forcibly, meaning the often violent relocation of tens of thousands of people.

Forecasters warned of a dangerous storm surge that would generate “large and destructive waves” and raise water levels up to three feet above normal tide levels. It also predicted rainfall of 5 to 10” (12 to 25cm) for much of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola.

Post-earthquake reconstruction has barely begun and even the building of transitional shelters — sturdier than makeshift tents, but not solid houses — has been slow.