NRL Sat - Tropical Storm Chris this morning, August 2, 2003 tropical storm winds extend 75 miles from center. The track of CHRIS is similar to Tropical Storm Jeanne in September 2004.

Haiti Braces for Hurricane Chris while fears for repeat of deadly Tropical Storm Jeanne persist

Storm Chris Page on HaitiAction.net for tropical cyclone links and updates

HaitiAction.net - Haiti has a good reason to be alarmed about the approach of this "small" tropical storm. The similarities to the deadliest storm in the last few years are significant and should make public officials respond before the storm arrives in a few days.

Currently the center of Tropical Storm Chris was about 100 miles north-east of St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) and is expected to pass north of Puerto Rico as well. The forward progress of the storm is slow at 9mph and a US Air Force Hurricane Hunter plane recently reported a fairly low minimum central pressure of 1007 mb, all of which, can contribute to its strengthening.

While the storm is expected to maintain its WNW heading and gradually increase, a strong mid-tropospheric ridge is building to the north of CHRIS and could have an impact on the expectations. While it is possible that the ridge could keep Chris from reaching the expected hurricane strength, it's more likely to cause the storm to drift more to the left on a westerly tack into the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Forecasters are predicting that Chris could become a hurricane during the next 12 to 24 hours.

Tropical Storm Jeanne - the center of the storm was just above the red circle when Jeanne was dumping the most rain on Northern Haiti which resulted in massive floods and the loss of over 3,000 lives

As forecast here, UN Chef Koffi Annan has taken notice of the storm and has postponed his planned trip to meet with President Préval's government this week. He feigned that his aircraft has "mechanical problems" while he sits in New York. His goals were to try to beef up swat teams to further repress pro-democracy activists. Hopefully, UN resources could re-focus on civil defense as part of their "mandate."

While UN troops in September of 2004 were similarly focused on repression, Jeanne passed off of the north-east coast and dumped massive amounts of rain in the northern regions. Just about every public agency that could have minimized the disaster were completely distracted. and Gonaives was inundated by the flash floods.

Other countries that were hit harder by Jeanne were able to protect their citizenry even though they didn't have well equipped UN troops in the region.

For example, while the Dominican Republic took the brunt of Jean, it had 18 deaths as compared to over 3000 deaths in Haiti. If that wasn't enough, in the aftermath of Jeanne efforts to help the victims were hampered by the better equipped anti-Aristide thugs. Wearing new uniforms supplied by their US-trained leaders, Latortue's "freedom fighter" gangs hijacked food and medical supplies intended for flood victims.

At the same time, in Port au Prince, the PNH and Latortue used the cover of the "massive death toll in Haiti" as an opportunity to go on their own killing spree for the next month largely ignored by the corporate media. USAID redirected millions of dollars, ostensibly to improve the country's hurricane awareness but let the program founder.

The track of Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004 looks very similar to that of CHRIS today.

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