Up to 500 Die in Caribbean Storms

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —  Tropical storms lashing the Caribbean flooded rivers and unleashed mudslides that might have killed as many as 500 people in two days, most of them swept away near denuded hillsides on the Haitian-Dominican Republic border, relief workers said Tuesday.

Rain flooded lowlands, washed out dirt roads and threatened remote settlements along the border between the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola, slowing or halting relief efforts.

Sketchy radio and relief agency reports put the death toll at nearly 360 on the Haitian side and 138 in the Dominican Republic and blamed four deaths in Puerto Rico and one off the coast of Guyana on the first storms of the rainy season. Hundreds more were reported missing.

“This is a disaster. We are calling on Haiti’s friends to help,” interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told reporters after being flown by helicopter to the devastated town of Fond-Verrettes.

He said local officials told him that 158 people in the town had died.

In another part of southeastern Haiti, relief officials and reports by Radio Metropole said 200 people had died in towns below the Massif de la Selle mountains.

Officials said that about 50 of those killed on the Dominican side of the border were thought to be Haitian black-market traders who were camped out illegally in the town of Jimani.

U.S. Marines and Canadian troops in the 3,600-strong multinational force deployed in Haiti flew more than a dozen helicopter sorties, bringing food and bottled water, emergency crews and Haitian officials.

The few crude roads leading to Fond-Verrettes have become impassable, and rainstorms Tuesday afternoon forced the cancellation of further flights, said Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, spokesman for the U.S.-led force patrolling Haiti.

Latortue and interim President Boniface Alexandre accompanied officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. Development Program to the area, Lapan added. Dominican President Hipolito Mejia toured the disaster scene at Jimani, just across the border and downstream from Fond-Verrettes.

Heavy rains have hit much of the Caribbean region for the last two weeks.

The flooding early in the six-month rainy season came before Haiti could start recovering from an armed rebellion less than three months earlier that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and set off widespread looting and destruction.

“What worries us is that even though we’ve had a lot of rain in the last few days, it hasn’t been as strong as we’ve seen in the past. The level of casualties we’re seeing already shows how vulnerable some areas have become because of the rapid environmental deterioration,” said Marie-Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of the Interior Ministry’s Department of Civil Protection.

The deaths occurred in Fond-Verrettes, Thiotte, Grand Gosier and Belle Anse -- towns forming an arc around the foothills of Massif de la Selle that have been stripped bare by Haitians who use the wood for cooking fuel or turn it into charcoal. As much as 70% of the population is unemployed.

Fond-Verrettes didn’t even have a suitable site for an evacuation center, Jean-Baptiste added, because the local Catholic church also was damaged by the floodwaters.

In Jimani, at least 130 corpses were pulled from the muck, and distraught relatives were digging with their hands to search for missing loved ones, Associated Press reported.

More than 800 Haitians died in flooding during Tropical Storm Gordon a decade ago.