Rescue efforts after Caribbean flooding focus on remote Haitian

MAPOU, Haiti -- U.S. troops delivered food and water to this remote farming town, where reporters saw for the first time Friday the worst devastation from deadly floods that have inundated parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic and left Mapou under 10 feet of water.

Aid workers dragged bodies and treated survivors who had broken limbs and gashes from aluminum roofs after torrents of water caused mudslides to cascade down denuded mountains Monday, destroying half of the town's 2,800 houses.

The flooding has left hundreds dead and thousands homeless across the south-central part of Hispaniola island, shared by the two countries. The death toll, impossible to estimate, is increasing daily as authorities find more cut-off villages and towns.

"We are trying to get a count but we estimate about a thousand dead" just among the Mapou's 3,500 people, said U.S. Lt. Col. Duane Perry, who commanded Marines as they ferried emergency supplies and aid ºworkers in helicopters Friday.

Mapou, which U.S. troops discovered only Wednesday while flying overhead, is just 30 miles southeast of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, but is cut off except by helicopter.

The floods struck early Monday following three days of heavy rains.

Many residents said hundreds of people managed to flee the torrents and were sheltering with families and friends in neighboring towns.

On Friday, American, Canadian and Chilean troops arrived in Mapou in helicopters loaded with water, food, medical supplies and aid workers -- along with shovels and pick axes to try to recover bodies.

International aid organizations warned of the possibility of finding many more hungry survivors and decaying bodies in remote areas. With few roads passable and only 14 helicopters, U.S.-led troops packed inflatable dinghies to reach outlying villages.

"The magnitude of the disaster is much worse than we expected with many, many more people affected," said Guy Gavreau, director of the U.N. World Food Program in Haiti.

French troops rushed Friday to the Dominican border town of Jimani, erecting tents for the homeless and burying 23 bodies recovered from the banks of a saltwater lake crawling with crocodiles.

"It's horrific. People are finding people in very odd and unreachable places -- even hanging from the tops of trees," said Sheyla Biamby of Catholic Relief Services in Port-au-Prince.

In Mapou, International Committee of the Red Cross workers pulled seven decomposing bodies from an area of submerged homes where only the tops of palm trees showed above water and mud. They placed the corpses in body bags and buried them in higher ground.

The emergency crews were working against time, warning of a possible epidemic if they do not quickly recover most of the bodies in the devastated border region.

They feared contamination of the underground water supply, which people here access through wells. Dominican officials said they plan to use planes to spray disinfectant over Jimani to keep decomposing bodies from spreading disease.

Perry said the Marines were considering whether to airlifting bodies for burial elsewhere.

The United States has provided $50,000 each in immediate relief to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Gavreau said the World Food Program distributed food to about 1,000 families in Mapou on Friday. "But we need four or five times that amount here" -- much more than can be carried in by helicopter.

He said they also would have to help survivors for far longer than expected because crops of corn and other vegetables were destroyed and the soccer field-size lake created by the floods also carried corpses of pigs and goats.

Four days after the floods, rain was falling Friday and weather forecasters said another three inches was expected over the weekend. Aid workers handed out plastic sheeting to help shelter survivors.

The official Haitian governmental toll climbed to 592 on Friday with the addition of 13 bodies found in Port-a-Piment, but that did not include the bodies found in Mapou.

At least 442 bodies have been recovered in the Dominican Republic, a number of them Haitian migrants who had crossed over to work as sugar cane cutters or market vendors.

Still, there were signs of hope.

Pounding hammers rang out Friday as Dominican soldiers and volunteers raised the first wooden frames of some 300 homes the government pledged to build for victims in Jimani, where the Solie River overflowed its banks and obliterated entire neighborhoods. This time, the houses are being built farther from the river.

Perry, the U.S. Marine, said a U.S. helicopter flying to the Haitian town of Fond Verrettes happened upon the disaster at Mapou.

"We discovered this when we were flying over Wednesday," Perry said. "We looked down and said 'It looks like there was a town there, let's see what's going on."'

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Associated Press writer Amy Bracken contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.