Ike's Floods Kill 58, Add Insult to Haiti's Misery

A man walks through flood waters as he pulls a wheelbarrow loaded with a coffin containing the body...

A man walks through flood waters as he pulls a wheelbarrow loaded with a coffin containing the body of a man who died from hypertension triggered during flooding after Tropical Storm Hanna hit the area in Gonaives, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008. Hanna has killed 166 people in Haiti. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

(AP)

Haitians took to their roofs to escape rising floodwaters for the second time in a week on Sunday as squalls from Hurricane Ike killed 58 people and collapsed a bridge that cut the last land route into the starving city of Gonaives.

All but one of Sunday's victims came in the Cabaret area north of Port-au-Prince, according to civil defense director Maria-Alta Jean Baptiste. She said another three bodies were found in Gonaives, victims of an earlier storm. They pushed Haiti's death toll to at least 319 from four storms that have hit the country in less than a month.

Witnesses in Cabaret said floodwaters rushed into homes in the middle of the night, crushing walls and reaching chest-high levels before receding Sunday morning and leaving everything caked in mud.

In the Always Funeral Home, 21 mud-crusted bodies were piled in a small room, unclaimed. Two of them were pregnant, one still clutching a small girl to her chest.

"We took refuge in one room and waited there all night and prayed," said Sister Marie Denise, who was trapped by waist-high waters in the house she shares with four nuns. They evacuated to the nearby school they run after the waters receded.

"We don't know if one of our girls is among the dead," she said of her students.

The rain had stopped by late afternoon, but authorities feared flooding could continue as water collecting in the mountains continued to run downhill. Much of Gonaives remained inaccessible even to United Nations peacekeepers in trucks because of rising waters and strong currents.

As the peacekeepers delivered aid to the parts of Gonaives they could still reach, scores of young men splashed alongside, begging for help. One called out with a bullhorn: "Hey, hey, my friend. Give me some water."

Food and fuel prices both skyrocketed, with gasoline reaching 500 Haitian gourdes (US$13) a gallon.

The U.N. beefed up security in Gonaives, which was isolated and pummeled by rains for four days last week during Tropical Storm Hanna. The city was cut off again Sunday when flooding caused the collapse of the Mirebalais bridge in central Haiti.