Haiti Reeling; Jeanne Heads For US
The death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne rose to more than 1,070 in Haiti, with officials warning it could double again, while the reinvigorated system, again a hurricane, has changed course and could strike the U.S. mainland.
"Jeanne is in the process of completing the loop and it's expected to move back toward the west and threaten, potentially, some part of the southeast coast of the U.S., let's say late Saturday," National Hurricane Center forecaster Richard Pasch told CBS Radio News.
In Gonaives, Haiti, trucks dumped scores of bodies into a mass grave in the flood-ravaged city still littered with corpses. There was no funeral ceremony when the bodies were dumped into a 14-foot-deep hole at sunset 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 1,072, with 1,013 bodies recovered in Gonaives alone, according to Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for the government's civil protection agency.
He said the number of people missing in the floods rose to 1,250.
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 of in the neighborhood whose opposition to mass graves had 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 250,000, with parts still knee-deep in water five days after the storm's passage.
It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit the U.S., but the National Hurricane Center warned people in the northwest and central Bahamas and southeastern U.S. coast to beware of dangerous surf kicked up by Jeanne in coming days.
"It's a Category 2 hurricane with maximum winds near 100 mph," said Pasch. "We don't expect much change in strength today, but obviously on this track it could pose a threat or does pose a threat potentially here to the southeastern United States."
Jeanne could first pass over the northwest and central Bahamas, so those areas were under a tropical storm watch.
State officials in North Carolina warned some coastal residents could have to evacuate as early as Sunday if Hurricane Jeanne continues on its projected path.
"Even though it's still several days out, they need to keep monitoring it right now, keep an eye on it," said Tom Collins, the eastern state coordinator for the state Department of Emergency Management.
The forecast models show various landfalls, from about West Palm Beach, Florida, up to near Daytona Beach, Florida. One shows the system paralleling Florida's east coast for a while, before going inland in the Carolinas.
The southeastern U.S. has been hit with three other major hurricanes — Charley, Frances and Ivan — within five weeks. In Florida alone, there were 60 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.
Jeanne's rain-laden system proved deadly in Haiti, where more than 98 percent 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 10 feet high.
The disaster follows devastating floods in May, along the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, which left official tolls of 1,191 dead and 1,484 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. U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air 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, Fla., 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 U.N. 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 were 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 1,098.