Trucks dumped scores of bodies into a mass grave in the flood-ravaged Haitian city of Gonaives, which is still littered with corpses, as officials said the death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne rose to more than 1Â 070 on Thursday and could double again.
There was no funeral ceremony when the bodies were dumped into a 4m-deep hole at sunset on Wednesday. Dozens of bystanders shrieked, held their noses against the stench and demanded officials collect bodies in nearby waterlogged fields.
The confirmed death toll rose to 1Â 072, with 1Â 013 bodies recovered in Gonaives alone, according to Dieufort Deslorges, spokesperson for the government’s civil protection agency.
He said the number of people missing in the floods rose to 1Â 250.
Only a couple dozen bodies have been identified, and nobody was taking count at the site of the mass grave.
”We’re demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields. Dogs are eating them,” said bystander Jean Lebrun, listing demands made by residents in the neighbourhood whose opposition to mass graves has delayed burials.
”We can only drink the water people died in,” the 35-year-old farmer said, citing a lack of potable water in this city of 250Â 000, with parts still knee-deep in water five days after the storm’s passage.
Hurricane experts said on Thursday that Jeanne — now a 160kph hurricane — appeared set to do a loop over the Atlantic and zero in on the north-west and central islands of the Bahamas and then the south-east United States coast, with forecasts putting Florida firmly in its sights.
Landfall was possible on Saturday. The Bahamian government posted a tropical storm watch for the central islands, including Cat Islands, the Exumas, Long Island, Rum Cay and San Salvador.
Meteorologists at the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami warned that Jeanne could hit anywhere from Florida to the Carolinas.
Jeanne’s rain-laden system proved deadly in Haiti, where more than 98% of the land is deforested and torrents of water and mudslides smashed down denuded hills and into the city, destroying homes and crops. Floodwater lines on buildings went up to 3m high.
The disaster follows devastating floods in May along the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, which left official tolls of 1Â 191 dead and 1Â 484 missing in Haiti and 395 dead and 274 missing on the Dominican side. The countries share the island of Hispaniola.
Survivors in Haiti’s third-largest city were hungry, thirsty and increasingly desperate. UN peacekeepers fired into the air on Wednesday to keep a crowd at bay as aid workers handed out loaves of bread — the first food in days for some.
Aid agencies have dry food stocked in Gonaives, but few have the means to cook. Food for the Poor, based in Deerfield, Florida, said its truckloads of relief were unable to reach Gonaives on Wednesday because roads were washed away and blocked by mudslides.
Troops from the Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping forcing were ferrying in some supplies by helicopter.
”The situation is not getting better because people have been without food or water for three or four days,” said Hans Havik, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Deslorges said there still are dozens of unrecovered bodies.
”There are bodies in the water, in the mud, in collapsed houses and floating in houses that were absolutely covered by the floods.”
Last week, Jeanne also killed seven people in Puerto Rico and at least 19 in Dominican Republic. The overall death toll for the Caribbean was at least 1Â 098.
At the grave in Gonaives, Raoul Elysee of the Haitian Red Cross said between 100 and 200 were buried and the rest would be buried on Thursday.
Officials fear disease
The decomposing bodies have officials fearful of health risks.
Havik said the contamination of water sources and flooding of latrines could cause an outbreak of waterborne diseases.
Martine Vice-Aimee, an 18-year-old mother of two whose home was destroyed, said people already are getting ill.
”People are getting sick from the water, they’re walking in it, their skin is getting itchy and rashes. The water they’re drinking is giving them stomach aches.”
She stood in a long line but didn’t know what she was waiting for outside Gonaives’s Roman Catholic cathedral, where hours earlier aid workers had handed out the bread. She said she had been afraid to fight her way through the crowd.
Havik’s federation made a worldwide appeal on Wednesday for $3,3-million to fund relief operations to 40Â 000 Haitian victims, and several nations were sending help, with the biggest contributions from the European Union and Venezuela.
At 5am (9am GMT), Jeanne was centred about 765km east of Great Abaco island in the Bahamas. It was moving west near 6kph. An eventual turn to the north-west was predicted, but it was unclear if that would happen before Jeanne reached Florida.
Jeanne could first pass over the north-west and central Bahamas, so those areas were under a tropical storm watch. Blake said it seemed less possible that Jeanne would curve back out to sea and avoid land.
Jeanne was centred about 800km east of the Bahamian island of Great Abaco. It was moving west-southwest and was expected to strengthen and turn toward the west.
Hurricane-force winds extended 72km and tropical-storm force winds 224km from the centre.
Also out in the open Atlantic, Tropical Storm Lisa was forecast to take a swing northward in the next five days, diverting it from a track toward the Leeward Islands. Forecasters said Hurricane Karl was expected to keep moving away from North America over the Atlantic. — Sapa-AP