Hanna floods low-lying Haitian city

SAINT-MARC, Haiti – Haitian families scrambled onto rooftops and screamed for help Tuesday in a city flooded by Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them.

Iris Norsil, 20, managed to flee the western coastal city of Gonaives and told the Associated Press that people there were isolated by muddy waters as evening fell, many seeking refuge on rooftops as wind gusts drove horizontal sheets of rain that flooded roads and buildings.

“They are screaming for help,” Norsil said as a U.N. aid convoy tried unsuccessfully to drive into Gonaives, now surrounded by a virtual lake of flood waters. A team of AP journalists accompanied the convoy.

Another convoy carrying Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis had to abandon efforts at getting into Gonaives when one of the cars was nearly swept away, said Julian Frantz, a Haitian police officer who was providing security for the group.

Flood waters rose rapidly outside Gonaives, where Norsil and scores of other residents who abandoned the low-lying city shivered violently in soaked clothing, nervously eyeing the rushing, debris-clogged waters.

“The situation is as bad as it can be,” said Vadre Louis, a U.N. official in Gonaives. “The wind is ripping up trees. Houses are flooded with water. Cars can’t drive on the street. You can’t rescue anyone, wherever they may be.”

Haitians clutched mattresses, chairs and other belongings as they slogged through waist-high floodwaters. The known death toll in northern Haiti was 13.

Hanna’s maximum sustained winds slipped to 65 mph, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could regain hurricane strength and turn toward the east coast of Florida, Georgia or South Carolina in two to three days.

Heavy rain from the storm’s outer bands fell relentlessly in Haiti, a country still recovering from drenchings by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Fay in the past two weeks. In all, floods and mudslides from the three storms have killed more than 100 people as Haiti’s deforested hills melted away in the torrential rains.

In Puerto Rico, flooding was blamed for the drowning death of a Colombian university student in a raging river. The man’s Brazilian friend was missing despite a desperate search in the water.

Swirling slowly through the southern Bahamas on Tuesday, Hanna lingered over the island of Great Inagua for hours, toppling power lines but otherwise doing little damage. There were reports of heavy winds stripping shingles from roofs and knocking down trees, but no injuries, said Chrystal Glinton, a spokeswoman for the Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency.

“Everyone is alive and well,” Glinton said. “The damages have been minimal.”

The same could not be said for Haiti, a country particularly vulnerable to devastating floods because of its steep terrain and hills that have been deforested for agriculture and by peasants who burn trees for charcoal.