01 May, 2004
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Days of heavy rain have caused hundreds of deaths and destroyed homes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At least 280 people have been killed, many of them swept away when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, authorities in the neighboring Caribbean countries said on Tuesday. Other reports on the devastation also include some bateyes in the region of San Pedro de Macoris. Rescue workers said more dead could be buried under the mud and debris.
About 110 bodies had been recovered from the Jimani area of western Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti, and some 200 people were believed to be missing, officials there said. The devastation in Jimani occurred when a river burst its banks early on Monday, sending floodwaters rushing through several poor neighborhoods and destroying hundreds of fragile homes. About 50 of the dead in the Jimani area were Haitians who had crossed the border to live and work.
In Haiti, up to 100 people were killed in the town of Fond Verettes and the surrounding countryside, and 40 more died in the southeast region of the country in the floods of the past two days, sources close to Haiti’s Civil Protection Office said.
Twenty others died near the Haitian-Dominican border in the south of the country, said a spokesman for a local humanitarian organization. The island of Hispaniola, which the two countries share, has been lashed with torrential rains in recent days. Many of the victims died when landslides and floods caused their houses to collapse, witnesses said.
Haiti, with a population of about 8 million, is the poorest country in the Americas. The Dominican Republic, with a population of 8.5 million, is more prosperous, but parts of the country, such as the Jimani area, are still desperately poor.
Several survivors told local media they had been asleep when the floods hit their homes. “It was all very fast, I couldn’t do anything,” said Ramon Perez Feliz, who lost his sister and two nephews. “I was saved because the current threw me away, out of the river bed,” he said.
Flooding in other parts of the Dominican Republic killed four people and forced thousands of people from their homes, officials said. Power was cut in many areas and crops were reported waterlogged, but officials said that it was too early to give estimates of damage.
The Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is calling upon everyone to make a tax-deductible gift to help provide emergency medical, food and shelter assistance to the affected. Please send in your check payable to Batey Relief Alliance, at P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230. You may also make a gift online by clicking on our DONATE NOW! For more information, please visit us at www.bateyrelief.org, or contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bkreative.net or (917) 627-5026.
Story by Reuters, Jose Ramon Torres, Oscar Quezada y Panky Corsino/El Caribe 5/25/04
