Marines Stand By Off Coast Of Storm-Battered Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE - (CBS4) - U.S. Marines are standing by on the USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Haiti, preparing to help take relief supplies to the nation being battered by Hurricane Tomas.
Speaking by telephone from the amphibious ship, Lt. Col. Chris S. Richie says he planned to start sending helicopters Friday to assess humanitarian needs, but those flights were canceled after the storm turned into a hurricane.
Richie is head of a force that has been on a humanitarian mission in the Caribbean and Latin America since mid-July. The Iwo Jima, with 500 Marines, was pulled out of its planned humanitarian mission in nearby Suriname to sail to Haiti.
Richie said the Marines will be part of a larger effort including the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Hurricane Tomas, meantime, is flooding a Haitian town that is already in ruins from January's quake.
The storm is battering the western tip of Haiti's southern peninsula. Families who already lost their homes in the earlier disaster are now fleeing another.
A seaside town west of the capital is being battered by driving winds and a storm surge. In one camp of quake refugees, dozens of families carried their belongings through floodwaters to a taxi post on high ground.
In the capital itself, quake refugees are resisting calls to abandon their shelters of flimsy tarps and tents.
A civil protection official says one man drowned while trying to cross a river in an SUV.
Earlier, the storm killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.
Buses began circulating around the camps just after dark Thursday night to take residents away, but few were willing to go. Many are afraid they would lose their few possessions -- and that they'd be denied permission to return when the storm was over.
"I'm scared that if I leave they'll tear this whole place down. I don't have money to pay for a home somewhere else," said Clarice Napoux, 21, who lives with her boyfriend on a soccer field behind the St. Therese church in Petionville. They lost their house to the quake and their only income is the little she makes selling uncooked rice, beans and dry goods.
Most of Haiti's post-quake homeless live under donated plastic tarps on open fields. It is often private land, where they have been constantly fighting eviction. A September report from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said 29 percent of 1,268 camps studied had been closed forcibly, meaning the often violent relocation of tens of thousands of people.
Late Thursday, Tomas passed to the east of Jamaica, where earlier schools closed in eastern provinces and traffic was jammed in the capital, Kingston, as businesses closed early.
Port-au-Prince's airport was expected to be closed through Friday, American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Sanderson said.
At the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba, the military cleared away any debris that could fly off in strong winds and ensuring the soldiers and sailors who serve as guards for the 174 detainees have enough supplies.
"We have a well-rehearsed plan that is going to serve us well," said Navy Cmdr. James Thornton, Guantanamo Bay's operations officer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
