HAITI: DESPERATE FLOOD SURVIVORS IN GONAIVES FIGHT TO REACH EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES

Record ID: 376280

  • Title: HAITI: DESPERATE FLOOD SURVIVORS IN GONAIVES FIGHT TO REACH EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES
  • Date: 27th September 2004
  • Summary: (W7) GONAIVES, HAITI (SEPTEMBER 27, 2004) (REUTERS) 1. HAITIANS ARRIVING AT FOOD DISTRIBUTION SITE 0.04 2. CROWD PUSHING AND SHOVING AS U.N. SOLDIERS HOLD THEM BACK WITH WEAPONS 0.08 3. HAITIAN FLOOD VICTIMS RUNNING AND GRABBING AT WATER CONTAINER ON GROUND; SOLDIERS SHOOTING INTO AIR AS CROWD DISPERSES 0.22 4. VARIOUS OF SOLDIERS C
  • Embargoed: 12th October 2004 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: GONAIVES
  • Country: Haiti
  • Reuters ID: LVABABNNZSJ4FJE0BC1LGR3T7KNH
  • Story Text: Desperate flood survivors in Haiti fight to reach
    emergency food supplies.


    For the second time in three days, U.N. troops in
    Haiti fired into the air to maintain order as desperate
    flood victims pushed and shoved to reach food aid on Monday
    (September 27) even as Haitian officials met with the
    United Nations to coordinate relief efforts.

    Thousands of hungry people swarmed troops trying to
    deliver food, water and medical supplies to the area
    devastated by Hurricane Jeanne over a week ago.

    As aid workers began to hand out supplies outside
    distribution centres in the northern city of Gonaives,
    hungry people shoved and scrambled to get to the front of
    the line. U.N. troops, in the country since the ouster of
    former President Aristide in February, shot into the air to
    control the crowds.

    Many of the residents of the port city of 200,000 have
    had little if any food since the storm devastated the
    region on Sunday (September 19), leaving as many as 20,000
    people homeless and flooding the region's important
    agricultural fields.

    Local officials said U.N. agencies had delivered about
    120 tonnes of food since Gonaives and other areas in the
    north and northwest of the poorest country in the Americas
    were buried under a wall of water and an avalanche of mud
    last weekend.

    Humanitarian organizations have launched an
    international appeal to provide aid over the next several
    months.

    The head of the United Nations Mission to Haiti, Juan
    Gabriel Valdez, met with Haitian officials in
    Port-au-Prince to coordinate relief efforts.

    "We have examined the different situations in terms of
    the distribution of food, water, in terms of cleaning of
    the city, the efforts that both the Haitian government and
    the private sector of Haiti are doing, and the ways in
    which the United Nations can cooperate with the Haitian
    government and the private sector of Haiti in this very,
    very, very difficult situation and catastrophic situation,"
    Valdez said. "We hope that, with these meetings, we will be
    able to ameliorate the coordination, both here and in
    Gonaives."
    The official death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne --
    which reached hurricane status before slamming into Florida
    -- stood at 1,180 and another 1,210 were missing, said an
    official with Haiti's civil protection office.

    Haiti is prone to deadly floods because 98 percent of
    its forests have been chopped down, largely to make
    charcoal for cooking. In May, about 2,000 people died in
    widespread mudslides on the Haitian-Dominican border.


  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register