Haiti death toll rises to 54

The death toll in the Caribbean from Hurricane Sandy rose yesterday and estimates of damage and destruction it caused grew as more complete assessments emerged from throughout the region.

Two new deaths were recorded in Haiti, bringing the total for the country to 54, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of the country’s Civil Protection agency. That means the toll for the Caribbean as a whole is now 71.

Haitian authorities were able to revise the death toll as rivers receded, allowing officials to travel through the storm-drenched southern peninsula. The death toll had been 52.

Jean-Baptiste said yesterday that one of the new deaths occurred during a mudslide and the other was a person who drowned trying to cross a rain-swollen river. There are still 21 people unaccounted for.

Hurricane Sandy drenched the country’s south with more than 50cm of rain in 24 hours.

In the Bahamas, the total cost of damage to private property and public infrastructure is expected to reach as high as $300m (€231.4m), according to a report from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, a risk pool for 16 governments in the Caribbean.

That total would be higher than last year’s Hurricane Irene, which caused about $250m in damage to the island chain east of Florida.

In Cuba, the government raised the number of homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy from 130,000 to 200,000.