At Least 20 Dead After Hurricane Tomas Hits Haiti; Cholera Death Toll At 544

Haiti (AP)– At least 20 people were killed when Hurricane Tomas hit Haiti at the weekend, triggering flooding and mudslides that also left some 6,000 families homeless in the impoverished Caribbean nation, officials said Monday.

The hardest hit region was Haiti’s far southwestern department of Grand’Anse, where nearly 900 homes were destroyed and another 5,000 were damaged as the storm skirted Haiti, civil defense authorities said, adding that 36 people were wounded.

Tomas was the first hurricane to batter the country since a cataclysmic earthquake in January killed 250,000 people and left more than a million homeless, and struck as Haiti was grappling with a broadening cholera epidemic that has left 500 people dead.

Authorities and aid groups have expressed fear that Tomas could further devastate a nation trying to rebuild, as the government had only been able to accommodate some 100,000 people in schools, churches and hospitals ahead of the hurricane — a fraction of those left homeless by the earthquake.

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