Gonaives, Haiti
The Haitian government appealed for international aid this week after flooding from Tropical Storm Jeanne killed at least 660 people. United Nations peacekeepers used helicopters to pluck survivors from rooftops in Gonaives, where the water was 9 feet deep. “Almost the whole town is underwater,” said U.N. spokesman Toussaint Kongo-Doudou. Search crews pulled some of the dead from houses buried by mudslides. Most of the victims drowned in raging currents. A third of the bodies in the Gonaives morgue were children. “I lost my kids and there’s nothing I can do,” said Jean Estimable, after two of his five children disappeared in the flood. “All I have is complete despair, and the clothes I’m wearing.”
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