And from the few seconds of CNN Haiti is all of a sudden back in the news.
"Hurricane adds to Haiti's woes, 4 dead in floods" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press | November 5, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --Hurricane Tomas flooded camps of earthquake refugees, turning some into squalid islands Friday as it battered Haiti's rural western tip, while largely sparing the vast homeless encampments in the shattered capital.
Aid workers rushed to guard against the spread of disease as the storm moved into the region where thousands are infected with cholera.
Related: Cholera Comes to Haiti
Hey, they were only trying to help.
Driving 85 mph winds and a lashing storm surge battered Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince that was 90 percent destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
In one refugee camp, dozens of families carried their belongings through thigh-high floodwaters to a taxi stand on higher ground, huddling under blankets and a sign that read "Welcome to Leogane."
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Four deaths were confirmed by Haitian officials, all people attempting to cross rivers by car or on foot in the mountainous region to the west of Leogane, on Haiti's far southwestern tip. Two more people were missing in Leogane. Tomas had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.
On Friday it came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, pummeling Haiti's southern peninsula, before moving on to the rest of the country, eastern Cuba and the Bahamas.
It could be days before the storm's impact is known as reports filter in from isolated mountain towns cut off by the flooding. But as officials took stock and aid workers rushed to contain flood damage and the widening cholera epidemic, the storm left harsh reminders of poverty's toll on the Caribbean nation....
Ten months after the magnitude-7 earthquake shook the capital to the ground, the devastation can still be seen in scores of collapsed buildings and sprawling refugee camps.
Yeah, it turns out that LESS than TWO-PERCENT of the rubble has been removed.
WhereTF did all that alleged aid and money go?
The disasters mingled in Leogane, where milky brown floodwaters filled quake-cracked streets and cut off a camp that was home to hundreds of refugees....
Aid workers are concerned the storm will worsen Haiti's cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 440 people and hospitalized more than 6,700 others.
I was told it was easing two days ago; WTF?!
Farther north in Gonaives, a coastal city twice inundated by recent tropical storms, police evacuated more than 200 inmates from one prison to another....
Haitian authorities had urged the 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake to leave the camps and go to the homes of friends and family. Buses were sent to take those who wanted to evacuate to shelters. But many chose to stay, fearing they would come back to find that they had been evicted from the private land where they have been camped out since the quake, living in donated plastic tarps, or that their few possessions would be stolen before they returned.
What my printed paper didn't tell me (sigh):
A near-riot broke out amid a poorly coordinated relocation effort at the government's flagship camp at Corail-Cesselesse when residents began overturning tables and throwing bottles to protest what they saw as a forced removal.
THOSE TYPES of TERMS are ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENING and CERTAINLY can not be from ANY GOVERNMENT AmeriKa suppor.... oh, wait a minute, NEVER MIND!
Just like the PRESS DOESN'T MIND WHERE the CHOLERA CAME FROM after the U.N. and WHO said it was NOT IMPORTANT!
About a third of the camp's nearly 8,000 residents ultimately went to shelters in a nearby school, church and hospital, American Refugee Committee camp manager Bryant Castro said. But there was no space for many others, who were forced to ride out the storm in the open....
Translation Haiti is hell on earth and global government is a complete failure -- if it was ever meant to succeed at all.
In Leogane, protesters took to the streets in the pouring rain, beating drums and blasting horns as they lambasted officials for failing to build a canal along a river that has overflowed repeatedly in the past.
Now this is REALLY AMAZING!
Here the IMPOVERISHED and SET-UPON Haitians are PROTESTING in a HURRICANE while Americans sit on their asses while banks loot them into destruction.
That really speaks to the SHAME of the F***ED-UP AmeriKan people and to the GREAT CREDIT of the Haitians.
Flood waters filled people's homes, swirling around the furniture and framed pictures.
The printed paper also noted that garbage was in the flow.
"When it rains the water rises and causes so much damage. We want them to dig a canal to move the water," said Frantz Hilair, a 28-year-old motorcycle taxi driver. "We have a mayor and the deputy, but they don't do anything."
I swear all governments are the same.
Local authorities put the blame on the federal government....
That sure is the case here. Fed u$e$ aid extortion
Poverty has steadily worsened in Haiti over the last century, with an unending spiral of political upheaval, flawed international intervention, frustrated aid attempts and natural disasters.
Look at the agenda-pushing corporate media skip over the U.S. invasions and coups.
Post-quake reconstruction has barely begun or even been funded; less than 38 percent of the money pledged for rebuilding has been delivered, including a promised $1.15 billion from the United States....
Didn't Obama put George Bush in charge of handling that? Great move!
As the hurricane neared Cuba's eastern tip, that country's crack civil defense forces evacuated 800 people from Baracoa, a city that often floods during inclement weather.
Cuba has crack civil defense next to free education and single-payer health care?
Where did we go wrong, America?
Meanwhile, a cold front hammered the western part of the island with heavy rains and a storm surge that flooded some low-lying parts of the capital, Havana, and closed the seaside Malecon thoroughfare.
In the Dominican Republic, to the east of Haiti, floods damaged at least 1,700 homes and forced the evacuation of more than 8,000 people, emergency operations director Juan Manuel Mendez said....
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Also see: Tomas brings more misery to Haiti (By Randal C. Archibold, New York Times)
I don't read New York Times updates from the Boston Globe anymore. Just a matter of principle, readers; it is there for you if you want it.
Update: Tomas loses hurricane status after soaking Haiti
