HAITI Aid arrives as flooding toll rises to 950

One woman's five children were swept away.
FOND VERRETTES, Haiti (AP) -- Health officials feared up to 1,000 people could be dead in a single Haitian town from floods that wiped out villages across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a figure that would nearly double the death toll from the disaster.
As search crews worked to recover bodies from devastated towns and villages in the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola, U.S.-led troops delivered bread, fruit and bottled water, and international aid employees fanned out to assess the damage.
The death toll was about 950, but the number was expected to jump. In the Haitian town of Mapou, as many as 1,000 people could be dead, said Margarette Martin, the government's representative for the southeast region in nearby Jacmel. Only about 300 bodies had been counted so far, said Dr. Yvon Lavissiere, the health director for the region.
Houses, bodies underwater
Martin said officials believed hundreds more may have died because houses were submerged and rescuers saw bodies underwater that they were unable to retrieve.
The town of several thousand people, located 30 miles southeast of the capital of Port-au-Prince, is still isolated by mud and landslides. The town is in a valley that often floods when it rains.
In the Haitian border village of Fond Verrettes, meanwhile, U.S. and Canadian troops handed out food to hundreds of survivors who lined up seeking help.
Troops in the U.S.-led force were sent to stabilize Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster on Feb. 29. Since then the new interim government has struggled to provide even basic services. Left bankrupt, the government has scant resources to deal with natural disasters.
Rains over the weekend lashed the island of Hispaniola, sweeping away entire villages Monday.
At least 417 bodies had been recovered in the Dominican Republic, and officials said some 400 were missing.
Of more than 450 bodies recovered in Haiti, about 100 were found in the southern town of Grand Gosier, said Civil Protection Director Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste. Fifty more bodies were found elsewhere in Haiti, officials said.
In Fond Verrettes, more than 158 people were missing and presumed dead.
Swept away
"The river took everything, there isn't anything left," said Jermanie Vulsont, a mother who said the rushing water swept away her five children in Fond Verrettes, about 35 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.
Rushing waters and mudslides swept away most homes in Fond Verrettes, leaving it looking like a barren riverbed with stunned residents wandering about and asking troops for help.
"For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," said Lance Cpl. Justin Collins, 21, of Avon, Ill., one of about 20 U.S. Marines who went to help feed villagers. "We were standing on some parts of a neighborhood."
Other troops surveyed the damage in helicopters, accompanied by U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman. U.N. officials also flew in by helicopter to survey the damage, Lapan said.
The floods struck before dawn Monday while people were sleeping. In the Dominican border town of Jimani, Leonardo Novas awoke to the screams of his infant son while water rose in his wooden house. He huddled with his wife and three children, and shouted to his brother next door to stay inside, but it was too late.
The force of the mud took all but one wall of Novas' house.
"Everything's gone. My house and five family members," said Novas, 28, who watched his brother and the brother's family carried away in a torrent of mud.
Dominican authorities buried more than 250 bodies immediately, some where they were found and others in a mass grave. Authorities told families there was no time to identify many of the bodies because they were badly decomposed and posed health risks if moved.
Jimani, about 100 miles east of the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, is inhabited mostly by Haitian migrants who work as vendors and sugar cane cutters. Dominican officials said some of the Haitians who lost relatives may have been living in the town illegally and were scared to identify bodies.