Haiti: The death toll in flooding in Haiti has risen to some 1,650, with about 800 people still missing, as Hurricane Jeanne which caused torrential flooding in Haiti, hit the Florida coast.
The hurricane peeled off roofs, snapped power lines and left large swaths of coastline knee-deep in sea and rain water yesterday as it ploughed through parts of Florida already scarred by Hurricane Frances three weeks ago.
Flood waters and mud cascaded into the northern city of Gonaives in Haiti and other parts of the north and northwest, leaving tens of thousands of people with nothing in the poorest country in the Americas.
Carl Murat Cantave, a Haitian government official, said the toll was now 1,650. The toll could rise well above 2,000 as more bodies are recovered from Gonaives, a port city of 200,000, and outlying areas.
Efforts to distribute food, water and other relief supplies have been hampered by security problems and on Saturday a convoy of government trucks bringing aid was attacked by gunmen and people with machetes as it entered the city, officials said.
In Florida, tree limbs and debris, including mattresses torn out of mobile homes, flowed through flooded streets along the Atlantic shore and more than two million people were left without electricity as Jeanne - a record fourth hurricane strike for the state in one storm season - moved inland.
At least two people were reported killed - a man electrocuted by a fallen power line in Miami and a truck driver crushed when ferocious winds flipped his cab - but there was no official confirmation yet of the fatalities.
Search and rescue teams will start moving out when the wind and rain die down to areas around the city of Stuart, where Jeanne made landfall at midnight with 120 m.p.h. winds, said Florida emergency coordinator Mr Mike DeLorenzo.
Up to three million of Florida's 17 million people had been urged to evacuate trailer parks, islands and flood-prone areas, but many, emboldened by having survived Frances or weary after six weeks of hurricane alerts, decided to ride it out at home.
"Today the focus is on life and death," Mr DeLorenzo said. "We need to get in there and find out what the situation is as soon as we can."
By 11 a.m. local time, Jeanne had weakened as it moved through central Florida and was 30 miles east-southeast of Tampa.
Its winds had dropped to 75 m.p.h. - on the verge of being downgraded to a tropical storm.
In its wake, its winds, torrential rain and pounding waves left a trail of devastation in areas that had little time to recover after being slammed by Hurricane Frances on September 5th and where many damaged homes had been protected from the elements by little more than blue tarpaulin sheets.
Dawn broke over towns littered with branches, twisted signs, scraps of aluminium, strips of roof and other debris. In some areas, cars stood in fender-deep water and mobile homes peaked out of newly formed, muddy lakes.
At the height of the storm, 300 people with special needs, such as the elderly and infirm, had to be evacuated from an emergency shelter in Brevard County after Jeanne began to rip off the roof, said Ms Jenna Heller, a spokeswoman for the county's emergency management agency.
A truck driver died after his vehicle was flipped over by strong winds, Ms Heller said. State officials said a truck driver had been rescued after his rig flipped and was being treated in hospital. It was unclear if the reports referred to the same incident.
In the last six weeks, Florida has been hit by hurricanes Charley, which slammed into the southwest Gulf Coast on August 13th, Frances on September 5th, and Ivan, which roared onto the Gulf Coast between Florida, and Alabama on September 16th.
Those storms left 108 people dead in the United States and up to $17.8 billion in insured losses.
Jeanne, moving west-northwest at 10 m.p.h., was expected to swing near Tampa later yesterday. - (Reuters)