Haiti: Tras La Tormenta

(CBS/AP) Hurricane Tomas was downgraded to a tropical storm early Saturday as it passed over the Turks and Caicos Islands, losing steam a day after battering seaside towns in Haiti.

Haiti was pummeled with 85 mph winds and from five to ten inches of rain. A foot of standing water fills the capital of Port-au-Prince, where four people are dead and two are missing. ...

It's been raining all night in Port-au-Prince and, for earthquake refugees living in tent cities, it has been a miserable night, reports CBS News producer John Bentley.

There over a million people living in the portable structures, and the rain has been coming down since the sun went down. The streets are flooded and a lot of rivers and streams are overflowing, causing a lot of problems. But as far as Hurricane Tomas goes, Haiti dodged a bullet - the eye missed Port-au-Prince.

If they didn't get the strong winds and major flooding they were worried about, the other problem will be how the storm affects the water and sewage supplies - important as Haiti battles a cholera epidemic in which 400 people have died.

source

The details:

On Friday, panicked residents fled a coastal city in Haiti that had been slammed twice already this decade by killer floods. The hurricane spared most earthquake-refugee camps in the capital but battered a seaside town to the west that was nearly destroyed by January's earthquake.

Coming ashore at Haiti's far southwestern edge, Tomas slammed the coastline with 85-mph winds and killed at least four people with storm surge and rains.

It then flooded camps harboring earthquake refugees, turning some into squalid islands in Leogane, a town west of the capital that lost 90 percent of its buildings and thousands of people in the Jan. 12 quake. Two people were missing in the city.

Tomas turned streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, into canals of flowing garbage. The storm largely spared the city's vast homeless encampments, however, allaying fears that an estimated 1.3 million displaced people would suffer from high winds and rain on hillsides and in parks and streets.

Haitians had high hopes that the storm would move on before triggering floods in Gonaives, a northwestern coastal city that completely flooded in 2004 and again in 2008, killing thousands. As rains fell on the city's slums of Raboteau and Jubilee, people living in the low-lying areas began heading for high ground.

"It's not a major flood, but it's flooding in some areas," Doctors Without Borders spokesman Francois Servranckx told The Associated Press.

And so the storm has passed Haiti. It has left a new disaster in its wake. And Haiti will now, again, fade from the traditional media and disappear behind a curtain. That would make this a great time to remember the suffering in Haiti and to send a donation-- even small donations mount up-- to Doctors Without Borders.

May all in Haiti be free from suffering. May all be well. May all be safe.

Haiti: On The Effectiveness Of Ceremonies, Part II

This is working. Really.

The idea is to shoot the gap. Put Tomas between the islands. So far so good. A little to the West might be better, but this is definitely looking good.  A work that is progressing.  Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.

On The Effectiveness Of Ceremonies

In connection with yesterday's ceremonies to spare Haiti the brunt of Hurricane Tomas, we find this article today:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- What had been Hurricane Tomas is now a disorganized tropical depression, and forecasters don't expect it to regain hurricane force.

The storm, with winds near 35 mph, is about 390 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moving west-northwest at about 6 mph.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami believes it will reach Haiti by Friday after brushing past Jamaica.

One forecaster says he's baffled by the sharp decrease in the storm and the hurricane center says there's still a possibility that it will regain strength.

Tomas has already killed at least 14 people and left seven missing in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia.

That speaks for itself.

And, of course, a very special thank you, thank you, thank you, gracias, gracias, muchas gracias.

Haiti: Hurricane Tomas And Today's Ceremony

This map warns of impending devastation. The news from Haiti this morning remains frightening. Bloomberg reports on the huge scale of the looming disaster:

Tropical Storm Tomas strengthened over the Caribbean Sea as Haiti braced for the system to hit as a hurricane at the end of the week....

Haiti’s government, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies are working on a response based on a projection the storm may affect 500,000 people, according to a statement on the website of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The nation is already reeling from a cholera outbreak and a magnitude 7.0-magnitude earthquake in January that killed an estimated 300,000 people and caused $7.8 billion in damage. ...

The Haitian government has agreed to allow the U.S.S. Iwo Jima to dock in Port-au-Prince if needed for disaster relief, according to the UN. Emergency groups are stocking up on tarpaulins, blankets, soap, hygiene kits and rehydration salts, it said.

More than 1 million Haitians have been living in camps since the January earthquake, while an outbreak of cholera has killed 337 people and infected more than 4,764, the World Health Organization regional branch said on Nov.1.

An article in the Miami Herald provides additional worries:

In Haiti, however, wind speeds won't be as critical as rainfall totals.
Flooding from Hurricanes Hanna and Ike in 2008 killed more than 800 people and the four hurricanes that hit Haiti that year left $1 billion in damage. A tropical deluge also could overwhelm efforts to contain an outbreak of cholera, caused by drinking contaminated water, that already has killed more than 300 people.

Meeting with authorities from the surrounding vulnerable regions around Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti, ... The health ministry was evaluating the possibility of evacuating patients at the government-run hospital, which is prone to flooding....

Still, the southern coast's largest city -- and Haiti's fourth largest, Les Cayes -- is vulnerable to floods even with normal rainfall.
``Once a hurricane hits us, we are in a mess,'' said Pierre Leger, a Les Cayes businessman, recalling how twice in two years mud burried the city of Gonaives after hurricanes.
``We have two canals -- one on the left, one on the right. They are blocked with trash, there are houses built on them. What happened to Gonaives could happen to us.''

I've been writing about this now for a few days, beginning when I saw that the projected track for the storm turned North, toward the south coast of Haiti. I've hoped that the Traditional Media would pick up the story, and that there could again be an outpouring of aid, this time before the disaster strikes, in time to do some good. That hasn't happened. Watching the animated tracks at NOAA and the flash and java versions feels to me like watching a slow motion train wreck.

I've suggested making donations to Doctors Without Borders and other Haiti aid organizations. I've posted these essays at various group blogs and on Facebook. Response to what I see as an enormous emergency in this Hemisphere has been slight. I choose not to analyze why this might be so: following that thread only makes my small essays seem like the unheeded, repeated warnings of Cassandra.

So I decided to call for help from my friends in the Shamanic Community across the world. I've sent emails (yes, you can send emails to Shamans), I've posted on Facebook (yes, Shamans are on fb), and I've talked with Shaman friends (you don't need Quetzel feathers and a bone through your nose to be a Shaman, btw). Consider, if you've read this far, that this is your personal invitation to help, also. At 11:30 am ET today, I will conduct a small ceremony, and I will ask Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra, Mother Earth please to turn Hurricane Tomas away from Haiti, and if she must put Hurricane Tomas's landfall in or near Haiti, I will ask Pachamama please to be compassionate and merciful, please to protect the lives of all of those in Haiti, to recognize that they have been devastated already, and are in serious danger. I know already that others on three continents will do ceremonies at the same time. The more, the better. And, of course, there's no prescribed liturgy: each of us will do what we can, each of us will do what feels like the right thing to do in that moment.

In my email I described my plan:

Hurricane Tomas is about to run over Haiti. What do we know about Haiti's current situation? Well, it's dire. The Earthquake destroyed the infrastructure. Many thousands of people are homeless or in shelters that don't really provide shelter or in badly damaged, unreliable housing. There's a cholera outbreak. And now, Hurricane Tomas is coming. If it arrives with any intensity at all, and it appears that it will, it will create even more havoc: loss of life, loss of shelter, loss of food, loss of drinking water. Medicine will be even more scarce, and even more people will need it. The cholera will expand. There will be flooding. Unsanitary conditions will abound. Because of extensive deforestation, there will be mudslides. Roads that are barely repaired from the earthquake will again be impassable. Hospitals will again be overwhelmed and unable to care for the injured and ill.

So what I propose is that we all have ceremonias tomorrow (November 2, 2010) at 11:30 am ET. And that we forward this email to all of our fellow Shamans who might be interested, and that we ask them please to make offerings and do ceremonias at the same time, that we ask for their prayers and offerings. Together we need to move the hurricane to the West so that the most vulnerable people in Haiti will not be harmed. And we need to ask the hurricane, if it must come ashore in Haiti, to be compassionate, merciful, to spare the most vulnerable, to be as gentle as possible.

... I believe that Pachamama responds to these ceremonias, that she guides these storms on their courses, and that when we honor and acknowledge our inner Hurricanes and destructive storms, as Pachamama wants, she in turn is happy to spare others from an actual, fierce Hurricane. ...

I will make a fire at 11:30 am tomorrow. If one of you is in the area, please join me.

In my view, the part about honoring and acknowledging my inner Hurricanes and destructive storms is a key. I dreamt that last night, and I am carrying it and turning it inside myself today.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your contributions.

A Slow Motion Train Wreck: Haiti

A picture is worth a thousand rants. The big island to the right of Cuba is Hispaniola. And the country on the west side of that island, the country that is about to be run over by Hurricane Tomas, is Haiti.

What do we know about Haiti's current situation? Well, it's dire. The Earthquake destroyed the infrastructure. Many thousands of people are homeless or in shelters that don't really provide shelter or in badly damaged, unreliable housing. There's a cholera outbreak. And now, Hurricane Tomas is coming. If it arrives with any intensity at all, and it appears that it will, it will create even more havoc: loss of life, loss of shelter, loss of food, loss of drinking water. Medicine will be even more scarce, and even more people will need it. The cholera will expand. There will be flooding. Unsanitary conditions will abound. Because of extensive deforestation, there will be mudslides. Roads that are barely repaired from the earthquake will again be impassable. Hospitals will again be overwhelmed and unable to care for the injured and ill.

I know that tomorrow is Election Day in the US, and that the Traditional Media are all focused on the T-party and the horserace aspects of the electoral process. But please. Could we please also spread the word on what is happening in Haiti and urge our fellow writers and readers to begin making donations to Doctors Without Borders? That could actually save some lives.