Dangerous Hurricane Gustav will hit Haiti

Haiti Action.net —Hurricane Gustav is forecast to hit the south of Haiti tomorrow in the region between Côtes-de-fer and Miragoâne causing life-threatening flash-floods and mudslides. Gustav is moving closer to Haiti at 12mph, it is expected that the forward speed will decrease and that the storm intensity will increase over the warm Caribbean waters. Forecast intensity for Gustav is for a Category 1 Hurricane when the center reaches the coast tomorrow morning.

Haiti's residents are ill-prepared to deal with the conditions that are expected from this storm. After over three years of military occupation by the UN, little has been done to bolster hurricane preparedness in the country. Tropical Storm Fay flooded many regions throughout the country just 10 days ago.

Many died needlessly due mainly to a lack of infrastructure including adequate bridges, roads and levees in flood prone areas of the country. Adding to the already crippling effects of malnutrition and poverty evident in Haiti today is a crumbling infrastructure, neither of which has apparently improved despite well-publicized international aid programs totaling more than $3 billion over the past four years. Critics have once again begun to ask what has happened to the aid money if the living conditions of Haitians continues to decline whether through grinding poverty or preventable deaths during the hurricane season.

It is expected that Gustav could dump twice as much rainfall as Tropical Storm Fay over the affected regions.

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Daniel Tillias of Pax Christi explained the goals of the demonstration in Haiti last week marking the one-year anniversary of Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s abduction, "Friends and family of Lovinsky are right now in the streets calling [on] the government to put out a report to say clearly what happened to Lovinsky. If he's dead or if he's in a secret jail somewhere…that they have to do something to release him so he can go back to his family."

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near Hurricane Gustav

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