Haiti faces new crisis as deluge follows earthquake

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

Rains swamp camps for survivors of January disaster as officials warn of need to move refugees to safer places

Associated Press guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 March 2010 22.36 GMT Article history

Associated Press Port-au-Prince

One of the heaviest rainfalls since Haiti's 12 January earthquake swamped camps for the homeless yesterday, sweeping screaming residents into the water and causing panic.

The overnight downpour sent water flowing down the slopes of a former golf course that serves as a temporary home for 45,000 people.

There were no reports of deaths in the camp, a town-size maze of tents near the country club used by the US army's 82nd Airborne as a forward operating base. But the deluge terrified families who two months ago survived the collapse of their homes in the earthquake.

"I was on one side [of the tent], the children were on the other and I was trying to push the water out," said Jackquine Exama, a 34-year-old mother of seven.

Aid workers said people were swept screaming into torrents which ripped down school tents.

"They were crying. There was fear down there. It was chaos," said Jim Wilson, of the aid group Praecipio.

The camp refugees used sticks and bare hands to dig drainage ditches around their homes.

Another camp, on the outskirts of Cité Soleil several miles away, was also flooded.

Officials need to move many of the 1.3 million people displaced by the earthquake before the rainy season starts next month. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the golf-course camp on Sunday that the people living there were in particular danger.

But after two months of searching and wrangling with landowners, the government has still not opened any of the five promised relocation sites, which are better able to withstand rain and aftershocks, on the capital's north-eastern outskirts.