Existing comment:
2009 Breaking News:
After the Storm:
In August and September 2008, the small Caribbean nation of Haiti, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, was devastated by four back-to-back tropical storms and hurricanes. After Tropical Storm Hanna hit, Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald caught a United Nations helicopter into the mid-size city of Gonaives, which had been almost completely flooded.
"I thought, 'Oh, my God. How can they recover?' " Farrell said. "People were just walking around in a daze and didn't fully grasp what had happened to them."
Everywhere Farrell looked, Haitians were trying to salvage what they could. One naked, mud-caked boy was trying to rescue a damaged baby stroller from the muck. "Like pretty much everybody, he had lost everything," Farrell said. "To me, it relays the struggle, the aftermath of the storm, but it also kind of [makes you ask], 'Why?' "
By the time the storms ended, nearly 800 Haitians had lost their lives and more than a million were left homeless. |