03 May, 2004
More than 3,000 people have been killed ? 1,500 more still missing from a week-long floods and landslides that devastated Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Hundreds of unidentified corpses are being buried on a tiny island surrounded by crocodiles, others in shallow mass graves 3 to 4-feet deep. ?This is a tragedy that demands the immediate attention of everyone,? said Ulrick Gaillard, Executive Director.
“We were sleeping and didn’t hear the water coming in, then I felt it on my face and tried to get out with my family. And that’s the last thing I remember,” said Alexandro Novas, 35. He was found the next day, two miles from his home, with gashes in his legs. His wife was killed, and his two children, ages 5 and 3, are presumed dead. “Now I don’t have my family and I don’t have a house to live. I’m lost?I wish I were dead,” added a tearful Novas.
He and 500 others from Dominican?s town La Quarenta have taken over an abandoned government housing project, where the buildings — roofless concrete shells ?
are upwind of the stench of rotting bodies.
More than 20,000 are left homeless with villages and homes completely wiped out. Among onsite doctors’ concerns is the possibility for hunger and epidemic outbreaks in the areas, and the near-certain likelihood of discovering more bodies ? those that have been washed away from local cemeteries and sent further down rivers towards nearby lakes.
The flooding has ravaged the crops and livestock of poor farmers who scratch out a living and piled misery onto already desperate conditions in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Average per capita annual income for Haiti’s 8 million people is about $300.
Haiti?s economy has been devastated by decades of international economic embargoes and political instabilities that led to the recent overthrow of the country?s first democratically-elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to observers, the way in which Aristide was overthrown ? with tacit American support ? meant that Haiti’s new interim government remains unrecognized by CARICOM, the economic community of Caribbean nations. So Haiti’s neighbors, including Jamaica, have been wary of providing assistance.
The Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is making an urgent fundraising appeal to help ship, ground transport and distribute food, clothes and medicines to the severely affected populations; provide emergency medical assistance; and rebuild the affected areas. You can help by making tax-deductible donations online at DONATE NOW!, or mailing your ckecks payable to Batey Relief Alliance, P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, New York 11230.
Other support in medicines, vitamins, medical and food supplies will come from BRA?s partners, including Heart to Heart, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Direct Relief International and Food for the Poor.
For more information on the flood situation and BRA, visit BRA?s website at www.bateyrelief.org. You may also contact Ulrick Gaillard at (917) 627-5026 or bra@bkreative.net.
