Friday, November 5, 2010

Hurricane Tomas bears down on Haiti

Last Updated: Friday, November 5, 2010 | 1:02 PM ET

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.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)

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.

The hurricane was about 230 kilometres west of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where heavy rain was falling.

"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.

Haitians urged to seek shelter

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.

An earthquake survivor walks in the rain early Friday morning in a provisional camp in downtown Port-au-Prince. An earthquake survivor walks in the rain early Friday morning in a provisional camp in downtown Port-au-Prince. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

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.

(CBC)

"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