Glen Cuthbert
Date: Saturday, November 13, 2010
Location: Caledonia, Ontario
Duration: 31:27
Distance: 5 km
Group Run. Not bad for my first time running 5k. It was cold (-1) but once going didn't feel it. Sore the next day.
Hurricane Tomas is lashing parts Haiti, bringing heavy rain to the island nation struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake that left more than one million people living in temporary shelters and camps.
The storm was updgraded to hurricane status Friday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
By 11 a.m. ET, the centre of the storm was passing between Haiti and southeastern Cuba, forecasters said.
Tomas had maximum sustained winds of about 130 km/h and some additional strengthening was expected, the hurricane centre said.
The hurricane was about 230 kilometres west of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where heavy rain was falling.
In Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince, rain and floods forced families to seek higher ground to avoid the surge of water.
"Storm surge and winds will be a concern for the warned areas, but rainfall is the major threat for Haiti," said CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe, noting that heavy rain could trigger flash floods or landslides.
Local media reported that one man drowned while trying to ford a river in an SUV in the rural area of Grand-Anse, said civil protection official Pierre Andre. The hurricane had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.
Authorities have urged people living under tarps and in tents to seek safer shelter, but many of the displaced say they have nowhere else to go. Others decided to stay in the camps out of fear they would lose their few possessions or be denied permission to return when the storm was over.
Nigel Fisher, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, said those who choose to stay in camps in Port-au-Prince are vulnerable, even though the brunt of the storm is not expected to hit the city.
"We'll have rains today, quite heavy, so we expect some damage," he said.
People in the yard of a high school on the Delmas 33 thoroughfare said their camp's governing committee had passed along the official advice to leave, but they decided to stockpile water and tie down their tents instead.
Buses began circulating around the camps just after dark Thursday night to take residents away, but few were willing to go. Four civil protection buses that pulled up at a camp in the Canape-Vert district left with about five passengers on them.
"I'm scared that if I leave they'll tear this whole place down. I don't have money to pay for a home somewhere else," said Clarice Napoux, 21, who lives with her boyfriend on a soccer field behind the St. Therese church in Petionville.
They lost their house to the quake and their only income is the little she makes selling uncooked rice, beans and dry goods.
"I was talking to one mom earlier today who just had a newborn baby, three days old," said Sarah Jacobs, who works with the aid agency Save the Children. "She was extremely scared, she was showing me where water would come through the top of her tent, even when there was a mild shower."
Jacobs said the tents and shelters in camps that house an estimated 1.3 million people are "absolutely not hurricane proof."
Karen Robinson, the head of hurricane preparedness for World Vision in Haiti, said that many people are still scared to spend time in some buildings after watching so many structures crumble during the massive earthquake.
Robinson said World Vision has been encouraging people to leave the camps, but she said they are asking people who choose to stay to try and tie down temporary shelters and dig canals around tents.
The United Nations and relief organizations have been reaching out to donors to try and secure additional supplies. There are also concerns the hurricane could lead to more cases of cholera if flooding contaminates water supplies.
The storm is expected to cross over Haiti's southwestern tip then swirl through the strait that divides Haiti from Cuba.
Hurricane warnings have also been posted for parts of Cuba, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands.
With files from The Canadian Press
Caleb Knor
Date: Monday, November 1, 2010
Location: Hamilton, Ontario
Duration: 25:00
Distance: 5 km
Ran 5k. I feel pretty lame for saying this when I hear Peter is running so much, but I hear “slow and steady wins the race.”
Relief organizations in Haiti are scrambling to prepare as tropical storm Tomas swirls toward the island nation that is struggling to recover from January's devastating earthquake and a recent cholera outbreak.
A U.S. navy vessel, the amphibious warfare ship Iwo Jima, was steaming toward Haiti on Tuesday to be on hand to provide disaster relief in case tropical storm Tomas appears late in the week as forecast, possibly after strengthening again into a hurricane. The storm has already caused 14 deaths in the eastern Caribbean.
Aid groups are rushing to do what they can but are already short of supplies after dealing with the catastrophe inflicted by the Jan. 12 quake.
Tomas would be the first major storm to strike Haiti since the earthquake killed as many as 300,000 people and forced millions from their homes. It would also be the first tropical storm or hurricane to hit since 2008, when the storms Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike battered Haiti in the space of a month, killing nearly 800 people and wiping out 15 per cent of the economy.
Even before Tomas hits, there are shortages of 150,000 tarps as well as soap, hygiene kits, field tents, radios and oral rehydration salts for treating cholera, United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator Nigel Fisher said.
"We need emergency shelter. We need water and sanitation supplies," Fisher said.
Warehouses are being emptied of existing stocks of rope and tarps to help people in camps, said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Piles of rubble and partially collapsed buildings from the quake still fill Port-au-Prince, the capital. Reconstruction is grinding along without promised aid funds, including $1.15 billion promised by the United States.
As of 8 p.m. ET, Tomas was in the central Caribbean with maximum sustained winds of 65 km/h, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Its centre was about 665 kilometres south-southwest of Port-au-Prince and moving west at 17 km/h.
Tomas is expected to strengthen over the next 48 hours, and could eventually regain hurricane strength, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Forecasters said officials in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic should monitor the storm's progress, because Tomas "could pose a significant threat to these areas later in the week."
Jamaica's government issued a hurricane watch Tuesday afternoon.
As a hurricane on Saturday, Tomas caused at least 14 deaths in a cluster of islands in the eastern Caribbean. St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves described the damage as "the worst we have seen in living memory." At least eight died in St. Lucia.
In Haiti's refugee camps, many people said Monday that they didn't know Tomas might be coming, but there was little they could do living in flimsy shelters to protect themselves.
"I didn't know about [the storm]. Maybe somebody came by to say something yesterday when I was out," said Florence Ramond, a 22-year-old mother and food vendor who is living on the Petionville Club golf course in a refugee camp managed by actor Sean Penn's relief organization.
Even knowing, Ramond said, she could do nothing to secure her home, a shack made of tarp, wood and a tin door. The roof blew off in an unnamed Sept. 24 storm that ripped through the capital, killing at least five people and damaging thousands of tents.
"They always go around and tell us to tie the tarps up, but I don't have a rope," she said.
With files from CBC News
A woman covers herself with a plastic sheet Friday as she walks in the rain brought by Hurricane Tomas at a camp set up for people displaced by the January earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press)
An earthquake survivor walks in the rain early Friday morning in a provisional camp in downtown Port-au-Prince. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
Earthquake victims buy groceries at an improvised store in Camp Corail, north of Port-au-Prince, on Monday. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
A woman walks by damaged power lines and infrastructure after tropical storm Tomas affected St. James parish, Barbados, on Saturday. (Chris Brandis/Associated Press)