Amid fears of far higher Dorian death toll, islanders scramble to leave

Yahoo – AFP, Cyril JULIEN, September 7, 2019

Hurricane Dorian refugees arrive in the capital Nassau (AFP Photo/
Brendan Smialowski)

Marsh Harbour (Bahamas) (AFP) - Bahamians who lost everything in the devastating passage of Hurricane Dorian were scrambling Saturday to escape the worst-hit islands by sea or by air, after the powerful storm left at least 43 people dead with officials fearing a "significantly" higher toll.

A loosely coordinated armada of passenger planes, helicopters and both private and government boats and ships -- including redirected cruise liners -- was converging on the horribly battered Abaco Islands to help with evacuations, both to Nassau and to the US mainland.

But Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said that "Nassau cannot possibly accommodate" all the Abaco victims. He said plans were being hammered out for constructing tents and other temporary accommodations, the Nassau Guardian reported Saturday.

For now, he said, supplies of food and water were adequate, though several witnesses from Abaco contested that.

A cruise ship carrying 1,400 evacuees arrived Saturday in Riviera Beach, Florida, CNN reported.

More than 260 Abacos residents arrived Friday in Nassau on a government-chartered ferry. Another, carrying 200, was set to leave on Saturday.

The US Coast Guard and private organizations have been evacuating residents 

of Abaco and other islands to Nassau (AFP Photo/Hunter Medley)

Residents said conditions on the islands were brutal. They said the smell of unrecovered bodies, along with mounting piles of garbage, was oppressive and unsanitary.

Hundreds or even thousands of people were still missing, officials said, as search-and-rescue teams continued their grim search. Morticians with body bags were beginning to arrive.

Minnis said the death toll -- 35 so far in the Abacos and eight in Grand Bahama -- was likely to climb "significantly."

He called the loss of life "catastrophic and devastating."

The final death toll "will be staggering," Health Minister Duane Sands said earlier.

A UN World Food Program team estimated that 90 percent of buildings in Marsh Harbour were damaged.

UN relief officials said more than 70,000 people on Grand Bahama and Abaco were in need of assistance. The WFP was sending food and supplies.

The US Coast Guard, Britain's Royal Navy and private organizations have been helping evacuate island residents to Nassau, hampered by damaged piers and airport runways.

Hurricane Dorian left a deadly trail of destruction on Great Abaco Island (AFP

Photo/Adam DelGiudice)

The Coast Guard said Saturday, however, that all Bahamian ports had now reopened. It said it had deployed nine cutters to the islands and that six of its MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters had so far rescued 290 people.

'It's not right'

Chamika Durosier was waiting early Saturday at the Abaco airport. The island, she said, was unsafe.

"The home that we were in fell on us," she said. "We had to crawl -- got out crawling. By the grace of God we are alive."

She described the increasingly desperate plight of those left behind.

"People have no food. People have no water, and it's not right. They should have been gone.

"Dead bodies are still around and it's not sanitary."

At Marsh Harbour's commercial port, Miralda Smith, a Haitian national, had arrived overnight on foot and was waiting in sweltering heat with dozens of other evacuees for passage to Nassau.

"We have no water, no electricity -- we're dying," she said. "It's really catastrophic."

Waves crash on Rodanthe Pier as Hurricane Dorian hits Cape Hatteras in 

North Carolina on September 6 (AFP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Many evacuees were Haitian workers who had seen their makeshift homes in a shantytown known as The Mudd completely flattened.

Those who have made it to safety awaited news of loved ones.

Diane Forbes was desperately searching for her two sons among some 200 evacuees at a shelter in Nassau.

On Tuesday, when last she heard from them, her sons told her that "they were hungry, and the scent of the bodies, the dead, was really getting to them."

Dorian, a monstrous Category 5 hurricane when it raked through the Bahamas, was buffeting southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, on Saturday with tropical storm-force winds, the National Hurricane Center said at 11:00 am (1500 GMT).

The Canadian Hurricane Centre predicted a landfall near Halifax and issued hurricane warnings for parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Earlier, Dorian brought flooding and power outages but no major damage to the coastal Carolinas and Virginia.

In the Bahamas, the scene was very different, as the newly homeless were growing frustrated at the slow speed of relief and evacuation efforts.

A shop floods in Rodanthe Sound as Hurricane Dorian hits Cape Hatteras 

(AFP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

"There's no gas station, no food stores, my job is gone," said Melanie Lowe of Marsh Harbour. She survived the storm packed in a two-bedroom apartment with 16 other people.

Hazmat suits and body bags

Arrangements were being made Saturday to care for the dead and account for the missing.

Mortuary workers in white hazmat suits, blue gloves and masks could be seen in Marsh Harbour carrying corpses in green body bags and loading them onto flatbed trucks.

President Donald Trump offered US support, adding in a video statement that "any cruise ship companies willing to act as stationary housing, etc., I am sure would be appreciated!"

At the Abaco airport on Saturday, Tanya McDermott was waiting with her husband and young son for a plane to Nassau.

With the injured given priority on outbound flights, they waited.

"We are going to wait around all day if we have to," Tanya McDermott said.

"We are going to hope for the best."

Cruise companies pledge aid after Dorian wreaks havoc on Bahamas

Yahoo – AFP, Virginie MONTET, September 5, 2019

The Royal Caribbean ship Allure of the Seas (L) and Carnival Cruise ships Liberty
and Elation are seen in Nassau, Bahamas in April 2019 (AFP Photo/Daniel SLIM)

Washington (AFP) - For the Atlantic's major cruise operators, deadly Hurricane Dorian has meant nothing but trouble in paradise as ships have been diverted from the Bahamas.

But as the widespread devastation becomes more apparent on the ravaged archipelago, a bread-and-butter staple of the tourist industry, the companies are pledging to help fund major relief.

At least 20 deaths have already been attributed to Dorian in the Bahamas in what Prime Minister Hubert Minnis called "one of the greatest national crises in our country's history."

Royal Caribbean, which has shuttled thousands of tourists every year to the Bahamas for more than half a century, said it is "rolling up our sleeves to help our friends" in the Bahamas by committing $1 million to Dorian disaster relief.

Similarly, the Disney Cruise Line has pledged, through its parent the Walt Disney Company, to give more than $1 million in cash and in-kind support to those who found themselves in the storm's path.

On Wednesday, the hurricane was advancing northward off the US Coast as a strong Category 2 storm, threatening the eastern states of Georgia and South and North Carolina.

"To make sure our donations go where they can do the most good, we are collaborating with the Bahamian government and our non-profit partner, the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), and a network of Bahamian charities and organizations," Royal Caribbean said.

Port Everglades, Florida, where several major cruise lines are docked, was 

closed due to Hurricane Dorian (AFP Photo/Michele Eve Sandberg)

Rerouted, canceled cruises

The company urged guest and employee contributions as well by promising to match every dollar donated.

It also said it had loaded generators, water, cleaning supplies, clean sheets, towels and other items onto its ships for delivery to the Bahamas.

The company's Mexican partner ITM, with which it has formed the Holistica joint venture that is developing a resort in Freeport, is donating an additional $100,000, Royal Caribbean added.

The 700 islands that constitute the Bahamas archipelago are located just 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Florida and are the home port to multiple cruise ships.

But for three days, the cruises were forced to avoid the region, with several prolonging their voyages so as to avoid the storm.

Norwegian Cruise Line temporarily substituted New Orleans as its terminus rather than Port Canaveral or Miami in Florida, and Royal Caribbean extended several routes, forcing cruise-goers to spend a few additional nights at sea.

Carnival Cruise Line, meanwhile, canceled several trips and reimbursed the would-be voyagers.

A spokeswoman for the company said cruise ships loaded with humanitarian and economic assistance would head to several Bahamas ports, including Nassau and Freeport, as soon as possible.

It added that it was evaluating how best to help the Grand Bahama shipyard and its employees, as well as tour operators.

Brazil's army fights Amazon fires after hundreds of new blazes ignite

France24 – AFP, 25 August 2019

Porto Velho (Brazil) (AFP) - Brazil on Sunday deployed two Hercules C-130 aircraft to douse fires devouring parts of the Amazon rainforest, as hundreds of new blazes were ignited ahead of nationwide protests over the destruction.

Heavy smoke covered the city of Porto Velho in the northwestern state of Rondonia where the defense ministry said the planes have started dumping thousands of liters of water, amid a global uproar over the worst fires in years.

Swathes of the remote region bordering Bolivia have been scorched by the blazes, sending thick smoke billowing into the sky and increasing air pollution across the world's largest rainforest.

Experts say increased land clearing during the months-long dry season to make way for crops or grazing has aggravated the problem this year.

"It gets worse every year -- this year, the smoke has been really serious," Deliana Amorim, 46, told AFP in Porto Velho where half a million people live.

At least seven states, including Rondonia, have requested the army's help in the Amazon, where more than 43,000 troops are based and available to combat fires, officials said.

The fires have triggered a global outcry and are a major topic of concern at the G7 meeting in Biarritz in southern France.

World leaders at the summit have agreed to help the countries affected by the fires "as fast as possible," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday.

His remarks come amid an escalating war of words with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro, who he has accused of lying over Brazil's stance on climate change.

Bolsonaro has denounced what he calls Macron's "colonialist mentality."

Trade deal at risk

The fires threaten to torpedo a huge trade agreement between the European Union and South American countries, including Brazil, that took 20 years to negotiate.

Pope Francis on Sunday also voiced concern for the rainforest, which he described as a "vital" lung for the planet.

The latest official figures show 79,513 forest fires have been recorded in Brazil this year, the highest number of any year since 2013.

More than half of the fires are in the massive Amazon basin, where more than 20 million people live. Some 1,130 new fires were ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

The new data come as protesters plan to take to the streets across Brazil on Sunday, after thousands held demonstrations in the country and in Europe on Friday.

GRAPHIC: Wildfires active in the Amazon. More than half of the fires are in the massive Amazon basin, where more than 20 million people live pic.twitter.com/SoDx41DWo0

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 25 augustus 2019

Dutch king to visit hurricane-hit Sint Maarten as relief effort picks up steam

DutchNews, September 11, 2017

Fresh water supplies reach Saba. Photo: Ministerie van Defensie / Gerben van Es
/ Hollandse Hoogte

King Willem-Alexander will visit the hurricane-hit Caribbean island of Sint Maarten on Monday as part of a short visit to meet locals and assess the relief effort. 

The king and home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk arrived on Curaçao on Sunday where they were briefed about the aid effort so far. They also visited a hospital to meet people who had been injured when hurricane Irma lashed the former Dutch colony last week.

‘I’m here in the first place to find out what has happened so far and what the coordination from Curaçao has done,’ the king told local media. ‘The only message I have so far is that we realise what has happened to you and we are doing our best to help everyone who needs it. You can count on our help.’ 

The evacuation of people injured by the hurricane has been completed and holidaymakers are now being brought out, news agency ANP said. It is unclear how many tourists are on the island. 

The US has evacuated some 3,000 tourists and American nationals who live there. 

Soldiers

Plasterk said he is impressed by what the police and military have achieved so far. He dismissed claims that the Netherlands has not done enough by pointing out that hundreds of people had already been dispatched to the islands before the hurricane hit. 

On Monday, fresh water will be distributed to people left without water supplies and equipment to turn sea water into drinking water is also being flown in. Some 550 Dutch soldiers are in the region to help with the relief effort. 

On the smaller islands of Saba and Sint Eustatius, which were not as badly hit as Sint Maarten, the roads have now been cleared of debris and made passable again, ANP said. 

Meanwhile, prime minister Mark Rutte told a news conference on Sunday that the death toll in the Dutch half of the island has risen to four, including two unidentified bodies which were washed ashore.

Trots op mijn staf en tijdelijke augmentees die 24/7 een topproduct neerzetten. Hartverwarmende aandacht voor onze inzet. @Defensie #Irma pic.twitter.com/G9jTVVFwIA

— Peter Jan de Vin (@C_ZMCARIB) September 11, 2017

French President Emmanuel Macron joins the Dutch monarch for a tour of the hurricane-hit islands of St Martin and St Barts pic.twitter.com/teY6NwjRsR

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 12, 2017

An aerial view of Hurricane Irma's destruction of Saint Martin pic.twitter.com/cKYFimcFVs

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 12, 2017

Flash floods take dramatic toll in Lima and northern Peru

Yahoo – AFP, Luis Jaime CISNEROS, Carlos MANDUJANO, 18 March 2017

Residents of the Huachipa populous district, east of Lima, are helped on
March 17, 2017, by police and firemen rescue teams to cross over flash floods
hitting their neighbourhood and isolating its residents

Flash floods and landslides hit parts of Lima, leaving some communities cut off from roads Saturday, as others in Peru fled rising rivers, and millions fretted that they won't have drinking water.

The government announced Saturday that so far this year 72 people have died as a result of heavy rains and flash floods around the country.

Peru's geographic extremes help fuel the often deadly force of the mudslides known locally as huaycos, the indigenous Quechua word for flash flood-landslide.

The South American nation of over 30 million has plenty of extremes: its Pacific coastal deserts in the west are interrupted by the soaring Andes, famed for the Inca people and Machu Picchu in the south. Further east, Peru has hot Amazon basin lowlands.

The tremendously steep mountains combine with many rocky and sandy areas that lack the topsoil found in more temperate places, meaning fewer trees are there to stop mudslides.

After weeks of heavy rain swept toward the coast late this week, many riverbeds in coastal areas went from empty to overflowing in no time.

In Lima, some residents on the outskirts of the capital of 10 million awoke Friday to realize their bedrooms were filling with water.

On Thursday and Friday, 10 people died in a landslide in the northern town of Otuzco. Seven of them were in trucks crushed by the huge flow of earth.

Others found themselves cut off by mudslides that blocked portions of the main highway linking Lima to the center of the country.

In one dramatic scene, rescuers used zip lines to help residents of Lima's Huachipa neighborhood escape over the torrent of brown water that was once their street, as it swallowed up cars and trucks.

The floods have been triggered by the weather event known as El Nino, a warming of surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc on weather patterns every few years.

Men take a shower with water from a municipal cistern in Lima on March 18, 2017

 after weeks of heavy rain came sweeping toward the Peruvian coast and filled 

many riverbeds in coastal areas that went from empty to overflowing in no time

'A difficult situation'

But this year it has hit Peru particularly hard.

"It's a difficult situation, there's no doubt about it. But we have the resources" to deal with it, said President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

The government announced it would release 2.5 billion soles ($760 million) in emergency funds to rebuild affected areas.

Over half a million people were getting assistance.

While Peruvians have been dealing with huaycos for centuries, many poor residents of cities and towns build makeshift homes in areas that they may not realize could be flash-flood zones.

At times, authorities tell different groups to move, but they voice frustration that they have nowhere to go. And authorities' presence in the poorest peripheral districts, many perched on mountainsides, can be inconsistent.

The inundation came as the National Emergency Operations Center said at least 72 people have been killed in Peru this year in natural disasters. A total of 72,115 have lost their homes.

Some opposition politicians have called for the president to declare a national state of emergency, instead of local ones.

Among them were a few lawmakers urging Kuczynski to drop a bid for Lima to host the 2019 Pan-American Games so that more funds could be used for recovery efforts.

Residents of a populous district of Lima queue to collect drinking water from

a municipal tank truck on March 17, 2017

Roads become rivers

In metro Lima -- areas such as Huachipa as well as Carapongo -- locals had to form human chains to avoid being swept away to their death.

Police and firefighters also used zip lines to evacuate people from the roofs of their homes.

Frank Luis Limache, a resident of Huachipa, told El Comercio he was trapped with a group of more than 30 people.

"Please. Help us. We are trapped in here and haven't eaten since last night," he said.

The Rimac River in Lima toppled a pedestrian bridge linking El Agustino and San Juan de Lurigancho.

In the Punta Hermosa district south of Lima, a getaway of posh beach flats, the usual upscale quiet was jarred by a huayco that on Wednesday swept a farm woman, 32, far from her farm, leaving her standing awkwardly near the beach with her bloodied cow. Caked in mud, her distraught image has become one of the local symbols of this flash-flood season.

Meanwhile, city authorities slapped tight restrictions on drinking water use due to worries over the cloudiness of local river water.

Those who could afford it, pounced on supermarkets and neighborhood shops to buy drinking water, causing shortages in many areas. In less-well-off areas, people lined up to fill buckets from tanker trucks.

Jovenel Moise sworn in as Haiti's new president

Yahoo – AFP, Amelie BARON, February 7, 2017

New Haitian President Jovenel Moise arrives at the Te Deum during his inauguration
ceremony at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, on February 7, 2017 (AFP Photo/
HECTOR RETAMAL)

Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Jovenel Moise was sworn in Tuesday as Haiti's 58th president, ending a protracted electoral crisis that had created a power vacuum in the impoverished, disaster-prone Caribbean nation.

Moise, a 48-year-old banana exporter who has never held political office but ran as the candidate of the center-right Tet Kale Party (PHTK), took the oath at a ceremony at the National Assembly.

He was former president Michel Martelly's hand-picked choice to lead the poorest country in the Americas, one still struggling to recover from devastating natural disasters.

"The Haitian people have spoken: it has chosen to entrust the reins of power to a young, dynamic man" who has ideas "to get the country out of the misery and political instability that has been holding back its growth and development for too long," said National Assembly President Youri Latortue.

Haiti is fighting to emerge from the world's most significant cholera outbreak, with an estimated 30,000 cases expected this year, as well as the effects of the January 2010 earthquake, with tens of thousands of people still camping in tents without proper sanitation.

The government and aid officials have said Haiti needs nearly $300 million to provide urgent assistance for its most vulnerable inhabitants, including those affected by Hurricane Matthew last October.

The hurricane caused $2.8 billion in damage, and more than 1.5 million people are still in dire need of humanitarian assistance, said El-Mostafa Benlamlih, Representative of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Musicians await the arrival of new Haitian President Jovenel Moise at his

 inauguration ceremony at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, on February 7, 

2017 (AFP Photo/HECTOR RETAMAL)

Lengthy political crisis

Moise's election brings to a close a political crisis that began in October 2015 when the results of a first round of voting -- which Moise won -- were annulled because of massive fraud.

In February 2016, with Martelly's five-year term nearing its end and his political succession in limbo, Haiti's parliament elected Jocelerme Privert, president of the Senate at the time, to be interim president.

The presidential election was rescheduled for October and then postponed to November in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

Haiti's political temperature remains high, with several of Moise's main opponents contesting his first-round victory.

The businessman is also at the center of an unresolved money laundering probe. He denies any wrongdoing.

The investigation was launched in 2013 as a routine bank-regulation procedure. The Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF) forwarded a secret report about the inquiry to prosecutors last summer.

However, the investigating judge took no action until four opposition senators recently demanded information about the findings.

The judge delivered the conclusions to the government prosecutor, who has made no public announcements on the case.

Moise was declared the winner with 55 percent of the votes, but with a dismal turnout of just 21 percent.

People gather outside during the inauguration ceremony of the new President, 

Jovenel Moise on February 7, 2017 in Port-au-Prince (AFP Photo/Pierre Michel Jean)

Austere inauguration

After the swearing-in ceremony, the 2,000-plus guests took seats in the courtyard of the presidential palace to attend a religious ceremony and hear Moise speak.

The event took place on the site of the presidential palace, which was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.

Austerity has been the motto of the inauguration ceremony, as Haiti is suffering from an economic crisis with more than $2 billion in debt and anemic growth that is not expected to surpass one percent this year.

According to Moise's transition team, the inaugural costs are close to $1 million, a tighter budget than those of predecessors Rene Preval and Martelly, which cost more than $4 million and $2 million, respectively.

While Martelly -- the sole former Haitian president at the ceremony -- is a well-known entertainment figure, Moise remains largely unknown to the broader public.

Moise said he had invited 53 other former presidential candidates to signal his willingness to ease political tensions.

The inauguration "of a democratically elected president allows Haiti to return to democratic and constitutional rule," US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Canada in turn "reaffirmed its friendship and solidarity with Haiti," and "looks forward to working" with the Moise government, the ministry of international development said in a statement.

More than 160,000 evacuated in deadly LatAm floods

Yahoo – AFP, December 26, 2015

People sit outside their house at a flooded area in Falcon, 42 km west from
Asuncion, along the Paraguay-Argentina border on December 26, 2015
(AFP Photo/Norberto Duarte)

Asuncion (AFP) - More than 160,000 people have been driven from their homes in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in some of the worst floods in decades, which have left at least six people dead, authorities said Saturday.

The areas hardest hit in the week leading up to Christmas were in Paraguay, where four people have been killed by falling trees. President Horacio Cartes has declared a state of emergency to free up more than $3.5 million in disaster funds.

The intense rain storms, caused by an unusually strong "El Nino" pattern, have forced 130,000 Paraguayans from their homes, authorities said. In the capital Asuncion, thousands were temporarily without power.

Emergency personnel were carrying out rescue and evacuation operations, said David Arellano, the head of operations for the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN).

"We cannot abandon the thousands of families who each year are affected by flooding," Cartes said in his Christmas message.

El Nino is the name given to a weather pattern associated with a sustained period of warming in the central and eastern tropical Pacific that can spark deadly and costly climate extremes.

Last month, the UN's World Meteorological Organization warned the phenomenon was the worst in more than 15 years, and one of the strongest since 1950.

People affected by floods set up improvised shacks in Falcon, 42 km west from

 Asuncion, along the Paraguay-Argentina border on December 26, 2015 (AFP

Photo/Norberto Duarte)

In northeastern Argentina, two people were killed and about 20,000 were evacuated from their homes by flooding caused by a rise in the level of the Uruguay River, authorities said.

Entre Rios province was the worst off with about 10,000 people displaced, most of them in Concordia, a city of some 170,000 located on the banks of the river where officials said it was the most serious flooding in 50 years.

Uruguay, which borders the river, has declared a state of emergency in several northern departments. As of Saturday, about 9,000 people were forced from their homes, according to national emergency officials.

And in Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday flew by helicopter to survey the damage in southern Rio Grande do Sul state, where about 9,000 people have been displaced by flooding in recent days.

The federal government has released $1.7 million in emergency funds for the affected areas.

American Red Cross squandered aid after Haiti earthquake, report alleges

Despite raising nearly half a billion dollars and allocating $170m to ‘shelter relief’, the aid organization built only six permanent homes, an investigation has found

The Guardian, Alan Yuhus, 4 June 2015

An undated American Red Cross handout photo of the aftermath of the earthquake
shows the devastation to homes in Haiti. Photograph: Matt Marek/American
Red Cross/PA

Despite collecting nearly half a billion dollars for Haiti earthquake relief, the American Red Cross has built only six permanent homes and seemingly squandered millions in the country, according to a new report.

A joint investigation by ProPublica and NPR uncovered rampant mismanagement, high overhead costs and deeply rooted acrimony from Haitians toward the aid organization. Among the investigation’s findings was that although the Red Cross apportioned about $170m to the category of “shelter” relief, and although it at first planned to build some 700 houses, it only constructed six permanent homes.

The report charges the Red Cross with consistent misrepresentation of its projects, especially in housing. The authors cite promotional materials that say the Red Cross provided more than 130,000 people with homes, and then note that that total includes people in “transitional shelters”, recipients of short-term rent assistance, and people who had been “trained in proper construction techniques”.

The Red Cross disputes the report and asserts it has “helped build and operate eight hospitals and clinics” and “move more than 100,000 people out of make-shift tents into safe and improved housing”. In a statement, the organization said it is “disappointed” by the “lack of balance, context and accuracy” on the part of ProPublica and NPR.

A major problem for the organization was leadership and staffing, according to the report. Integral positions, including experts for health and shelter, were left vacant for months and sometimes years. The positions that were staffed were predominantly held by expats or by people flown in from the United States, many of whom could not speak French or Creole.

In one 2011 document, Red Cross official Judith St Ford notes that there are “serious program delays caused by internal issues that go unaddressed”, including for cholera relief.

“There is a clear lack of foresight and planning,” she wrote, and “the lack of leadership ability has contributed to poor morale in the field.”

She also urged her superiors to hire more Haitians: “the implication that talented, smart, competent Haitians cannot be found in Haiti has to be dispelled.”

In its statement the Red Cross says 90% of its current staff are Haitians; the organization did not break down the hierarchy or positions of its staff.

“If they were an organization that had a real history in Haiti I think this would’ve gone a lot better,” said Justin Elliott, one of the journalists who co-wrote the report. “The entire Haiti reconstruction effort has been really problematic, but the outside groups that have done better have roots there, have Haitian people working at high levels, have people who speak the language.”

In one 2013 email published by ProPublica, CEO Gail McGovern admitted a project had failed and that she did not know what to do with a $20m remainder. “Now that the Northern project is going bust and we are still holding $20 million of contingency, any ideas on how to spend the rest of this?” she asked, before mentioning a mysterious “wonderful helicopter idea”.

Without Haitians in leadership positions, the Red Cross was particularly ill-prepared to deal with Haiti’s land tenure rules, a system so tangled and unforgiving that it has intimidated USAid and Vatican relief efforts.

Residents of the Jean-Marie Vincent camp for people displaced by the 2010
earthquake, wait for customers outside their tent where they have set up a
stand to sell rice, oil and canned goods in Port-au-Prince on 9 January 2013.
Photograph: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP

“Land tenure is probably the biggest stumbling block,” said Jonathan M Katz, a freelance journalist and author of a book about the earthquake, The Big Truck That Went By. The system has stymied aid organizations for years, and Katz said that for years aid organizations have “thrown up their collective hands and said ‘we don’t really want to deal with this.’”

The Red Cross entangled itself in a web of other organizations, often paying them to do relief work, themselves struggling in Haiti. This outsourcing is commonplace in the international aid industry, Katz said, and leads to inevitable but not necessarily unreasonable overhead costs. But eager to better solicit donations, organizations often try to downplay these costs.

The report notes that overhead charges by the Red Cross and its contractors undermine McGovern’s claim that “minus the nine cents overhead, 91 cents on the dollar will be going to Haiti.”

In one case, Elliott and his co-author, NPR’S Laura Sullivan, found that the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) exacted $1.56m in overhead from the American Red Cross’s payment of $6m, all to help give Haitians rental subsidies so they could leave tent camps. The IFRC said the costs were related to “administration, finance, human resources”.

In another case, the Red Cross commissioned Swiss and Spanish Red Cross societies to upgrade shelters, but still took 24% of the money for the project in additional overhead costs, according to the report.

Where exactly the $488m of the American Red Cross’s Haiti budget has gone is unclear, Elliott said, since “the whole international aid sector is pretty opaque in general. And the spending of the American Red Cross is incredible opaque. You can tell hardly anything from their disclosures.”

He said that the issue of money was particularly sensitive to Haitians who had coordinated with the Red Cross.

“They were furious basically over broken promises,” Elliott said. “About three years ago, the Red Cross told people they were going to build hundreds of new homes in this very hard-hit area, and this thing was just stalled. Over the next two years they had meetings with the community, handed out juice boxes and so on, and nothing happened for a long time.”

The Red Cross is now helping build a road and install solar lights in the area.

Katz said that the problems of the American Red Cross are “typical of the aid industry in general. The Red Cross is sort of the biggest kid on the block. Because they make way more money than anybody else, what they do is magnified.”

The interconnected NGOs and aid organizations of the world, ranging from the many satellites of the Red Cross to Doctors Without Borders to the Clinton Foundation, Katz said, should deserve more skepticism from the public. Reports have traced the 2011 cholera epidemic to United Nations relief efforts, he noted, adding that many organizations operate more like businesses than anything else.

“Even when an aid group is pulling off a project well,” he said, “if it isn’t going to be there forever, if it isn’t going to be accountable for successes and failures, if it isn’t leaving something behind that’s permanent, then it’s still capable of doing damage.”

Last year the Red Cross similarly took issue with another ProPublica report that said the organization had disastrously mismanaged aid relief after hurricane Sandy.

Tornado, floods leave deadly trail at Mexico-US border

Yahoo – AFP, Leticia Pineda, 26 May 2015

People survey a destroyed car in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico on May 25, 2015 after 

a tornado ripped into the town killing at least 13 people (AFP Photo/Raul Llamas)

Mexico City (AFP) - A tornado ripped into a town in northern Mexico, killing at least 13 people and flattening hundreds of homes in a deadly six-second blast of carnage, officials said.

The savage twister roared through the Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuna at dawn, tossing cars and big rig trucks into the air before they smashed into houses and buildings.

Images from the aftermath showed several crumpled vehicles resting against walls and roofs as shellshocked inhabitants of the town of 136,000 struggled to make sense of the devastation.

The tornado came as ferocious weather battered swathes of Mexico and the southern United States, where rescuers hunted for 12 people missing in flash floods across Texas and Oklahoma that left three people dead.

In Mexico, national civil protection coordinator Luis Felipe Puente told Foro TV that "more than 1,000 homes" had been affected.

The tornado swept in at "impressive speed" of 270-300 kilometers (168-186 miles) per hour and lasted only six seconds, Puente said.

This May 24, 2015 handout photo provided by the Blanco Police Department in Blanco,

 Texas shows the bridge on Rte 165 spanning the Blanco River that was washed away 

by flash flooding caused by torrential downpours (AFP Photo)

Coahuila Interior Secretary Victor Zamora said the death toll rose from 11 to 13. The victims include 10 adults and three children.

Almost 230 people were hurt after getting hit or cut by objects thrown by the wind, Zamora told Milenio television. Of those, 88 were still getting treatment in the afternoon.

Ciudad Acuna Mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez said a seven-year-old boy was missing, while rescuers combed through the rubble to look for any more victims or survivors.

'Practically destroyed'

Most of the fatalities were people who were out on the street.

"We have hundreds of houses that are practically destroyed," Perez said, appealing for water, canned food and clothing for the victims.

Authorities opened eight temporary shelters for those left homeless.

The tornado whipped up as heavy rains pounded the city, with hail falling in some areas.

Three of the fatalities, including two children, were killed when a ceiling collapsed on them, local press reports said.

Parts of Austin, Texas are shown inundated

 after days of heavy rain on May 25, 

2015 (AFP Photo/Drew Anthony Smith)

President Enrique Pena Nieto offered federal aid and said such tornadoes are "unusual in our country."

Across the border in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott declared states of disaster in 24 counties as severe weather lashed the region.

"I strongly urge all Texans to exercise every possible precaution to ensure their safety and the safety of their families and neighbors," Abbott said in a statement.

Authorities in the Texas city of San Marcos ordered residents to evacuate as flood waters rose menacingly around them, following torrential rain that turned streets into meandering rivers.

Cars and trucks were submerged and people used inflatable lounge chairs to float down the street, in surreal scenes.

As many as 400 homes in the surrounding area were destroyed, authorities said, and San Marcos opened temporary shelters to host residents who could not return home.

At least 12 people are reported missing in Texas, said Kharley Smith, emergency response coordinator for Hays County, which includes San Marcos.

Search parties

She said people were forming their own search parties along the Blanco River, and warned them against this, saying it was dangerous.

"We have local resources, regional and state assets that are actively doing search and rescues," Smith told a news conference.

Tape is stretched across a flooded Sixth 

Street after days of heavy rain on May 25,

 2015 in Austin, Texas (AFP Photo/Drew

Anthony Smith)

"It's not safe for the general public to go down and do those rescue or search operations themselves."

The city council said the river had broken record levels set in the 1920s.

Fire Marshal Ken Bell told CNN that at least one person was confirmed dead and crews were searching for three missing people.

At least two people also died in Oklahoma, which is located to the north of Texas.

A firefighter in the town of Claremore died when he was swept into a storm drain while trying to help a resident in floodwaters, CNN said, and a woman in Tulsa died after her car hydroplaned.

The National Weather Service warned that strong to severe thunderstorms were expected across a large stretch of the central and southern plains toward the Mississippi River Valley.

Vehicles are left stranded on Interstate 45 in Houston, Texas on May 26, 2015,

after heavy rains put the city under massive amounts of water (AFP Photo/

Aaron M. Sprecher)

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