HAITI/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Haiti and Dominican Republic brace for ferocious Hurricane Ike

Record ID: 450225

  • Title: HAITI/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Haiti and Dominican Republic brace for ferocious Hurricane Ike
  • Date: 7th September 2008
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Creole) RESIDENT GERMAIN PIERRE-FRITNEL SAYING: "We have lost everything. We do not have time to save anything at all so we are asking the government to take immediate action. If not we will die."
  • Embargoed: 22nd September 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA12I8TF9ZT2N0CQON8LJENX8WY
  • Story Text: Residents of the Dominican Republic and flood-hit Haiti brace themselves for ferocious Hurricane Ike.
    Even as Haitians try to cope with flooding and devastation left by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna, they prepared Saturday (September 6) for Hurricane Ike to barrel by on its way to Cuba.
    Unofficial reports tally the number of dead in Haiti at 529.
    Floods and mudslides triggered by Hanna have cut off the Haitian countryside and outlying coastal areas making rescue efforts virtually impossible.
    The Haitian city of Gonaives is still under water as fears grow over food and clean water supplies.
    The last time floods like this occurred in Gonaives in 2004, 3,000 died.
    The United Nations is preparing to issue an appeal for funds for Haiti, which it said had requested international aid.
    UNICEF has mobilized over 1 million U.S. dollars to immediately respond to the needs of the estimated 650,000 people who have been adversely affected, 300,000 of which are children.

    "On the infrastructure on the roads, which have put a lot of people into a lot of stress and affected several hundred thousand people according to the figures provided by local authorities," Louis-Etienne Vigneault the UNICEF Representative in Haiti told Reuters.
    The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed on Friday (September 6) for 3.8 million Swiss francs ($3.4 million) to help 50,000 people in Haiti recover from Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna.
    People living in the Dominican Republic were preparing for the worst as well as Ike bears down on them.
    Supermarkets were full of people not taking any chances of being caught without supplies.

    "We already saw what happened with Hanna, the last one went down and then it came back up," said Carmen Segura as she shopped for supplies.
    "We don't know what could happen."
    Ike's top sustained winds reached 135 miles per hour (215 kph), making it an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
    Ike alternately weakened and strengthened but was likely to remain a "major" hurricane of at least Category 3 as it hit Cuba, the forecasters said.
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