30465: (news) Chamberlain: Floods, mudslides kill three in Haiti's capital (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 25 (Reuters) - Torrential rains triggered
flooding and mudslides that killed three people in Haiti's capital,
officials said on Friday, raising fears of more destruction during the
coming hurricane season.
     "Three people were killed and 11 injured and several houses have been
destroyed," Dieufort Deslorge, a spokesman for the civil protection office,
told Reuters.
     Hardest hit were the poor Carrefour-Feuille, Jacquet and Morne Lazarre
neighborhoods. Deslorge urged residents living in flimsy huts on riverbeds
and hillsides to take precautions.
     "Those killed and injured were living in areas at risk," he said.
     Torrential rains often turn deadly in impoverished and mountainous
Haiti, especially in sprawling shantytowns.
     Many Haitians are worried about the upcoming hurricane season. In
2004, spring flooding killed 2,000 people in the southern part of the
country in May and flooding from Tropical Storm Jeanne killed 3,000 more in
the port city of Gonaives in September.
     "I've been living here for 10 years now in permanent fear of being one
day taken away by floods," said Mariline Gustave, 27, who lives in the
Port-au-Prince slum Cite Leternel. "But I have no where else to go, so I
leave it up to God."
     A senior advisor to the interior minister, who did not want to be
named, said the government was contemplating measures to fight haphazard
construction and to force residents to leave homes built in vulnerable
areas.
     Some said those steps were overdue.
     "The government has to destroy those flimsy shacks built on riverbeds
and on the hillsides," said a Port-au-Prince foreman, Joseph Lajoie.
"Politicians just don't want to take unpopular actions."