September 24, 2004

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  Officials estimate 250,000 homeless

  
  

  By Amy Bracken
  ASSOCIATED PRESS

  
  

  11:00 a.m. September 22, 2004
  

  GONAIVES, Haiti – U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air to keep a hungry crowd at bay Wednesday.

  
  

  More than 1,000 people have been declared missing in Haiti. The northern city of Gonaives was the hardest hit in the country – with some 600 dead. Piles of bodies grew in morgues as rescuers found more victims in mud and rubble.

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

  Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs still floated in muddy waters slowly receding from the streets in Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest city with some 250,000 people. No house escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people in homes that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes. Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city's three morgues. The electricity was off, and the stench of death hung over the city.

  
  

  "We're going to start burying people in mass graves."

  
  

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  FEARS OF EPIDEMIC

  
  

      Grave fears were felt by health workers that epidemics may occur because a lot of human bodies and animal carcasses left unburied, overflowing sewage has brought contamination, potable water and medical materials are in great need.
  

      At the General Hospital, Gonaives' main medical institution, medical supplies were running out, but the main road north from the city was destroyed in the storm, making it difficult to access aid materials.
  

      Nearly a week after the storm, water in some places of Gonaivesis still knee-high, and a number of children, orphaned or abandoned, were seen roaming around the city, an official of the Red Cross said.
  

      Aid workers feared waterborne disease, especially malaria and tetanus, may erupt, an official of the UN Children's Fund said.

  
  

   

  • 9:35 am
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