30483: SFClinics: ReuterS/ Delva--Floods, mudslides & death in P-a-P (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: SFclinics1@aol.com

By Joseph Guyler Delva

REUTERS
9:06 a.m. May 25, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Torrential rains triggered flooding and mudslides
that killed three people in Haiti's capital, officials said 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.

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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

Tommy Henderson
563-323-5068 <SFclinics1@aol.com>
2034 West 5th Street
Davenport, Iowa 52802-1006

VOCATVS  ATQUE NON ----VOCATVS  DEUS ADERIT
Bidden or not bidden, God is present

  Carl Jung









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