Haiti scrambles to prepare for feared hurricane hit

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Government officials and  aid partners in earthquake- and cholera-ravaged Haiti scrambled  today to prepare crowded quake survivor camps and coastal  towns for a possible hit by a hurricane later this week.
Tropical Storm Tomas, which is heading westward across the  eastern Caribbean sea, is expected to turn north towards Haiti  and Dominican Republic by the end of the week, and restrengthen  as a hurricane, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Jamaica also could be impacted, although the precise track  of the storm remained uncertain, the forecasters said.
Tomas now threatens another humanitarian emergency for  disaster-prone Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state.
Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in January and is  grappling with a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 330  people so far and sickened nearly 5,000 more.
“This storm is approaching at a time when aid agencies in  Haiti are already stretched to the limit,” said Nigel Fisher,  the humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations in Haiti.
“The humanitarian challenges involved are among the most  complex I’ve seen in my entire career,” Fisher added in a  statement.
As a Category 1 hurricane over the weekend, Tomas battered  Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent in the Windward Islands,  ripping roofs off homes and knocking down trees and power  lines. Insurance experts were estimating damage-linked  insurance payouts for the three islands would top $10 million.
No deaths were reported.
At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Tomas was carrying top sustained  winds of 45 miles per hour (75 kph) and was located about 90  miles (150 km) northeast of Curacao, the Miami-based hurricane  center said.
“Haiti or Jamaica are the most likely targets of Tomas,”  hurricane expert Jeff Masters of private U.S. forecaster  Weather Underground wrote in his blog on Monday, citing  computer forecast models.
But he added weather conditions meant the exact track of  Tomas remained uncertain, and the storm could still be in the  Caribbean a week from now.
Haitian officials and aid workers are worried that the  powerful winds and torrential rain associated with Tomas will  menace more than 1.3 million homeless earthquake survivors  currently living in fragile tent and tarpaulin camps scattered  across the wrecked, hilly capital Port-au-Prince.
In September, a powerful half-hour storm in the capital  killed at least six people, injured 70 and destroyed or damaged  the tent or tarpaulin homes of more than 10,000 families.  Floods and mudslides in mid-October killed 10 more people.
U.N. agencies and aid groups are rushing emergency supplies  of medicine, food and shelter materials to the survivors camps  and to the coastal towns of Les Cayes and Gonaives, which could  be hit by storm surges and flooding.
“We need emergency shelter. We need water and sanitation  supplies. And we need as much of it as possible in place before  Hurricane Tomas hits,” Fisher said.
With a full-scale evacuation of camps and threatened  coastal communities deemed impossible, authorities urged those  who could do so to seek more secure refuge in the homes of  friends and family.
The United Nations said Haiti’s government had agreed to  the United States sending the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo  Jima to support logistics operations, which the 12,000-strong  U.N. peacekeeping force in the country will also be assisting.
If roads are blocked by the hurricane, cargo would be moved  along the coast by barge and other vessels.
The magnitude 7 earthquake that hit Haiti’s capital on Jan.  12 killed up to 300,000 people and left 1.3 million homeless.