Food aid arrives in Haiti
2004-06-04 11:17
Fonds-Verrettes, Haiti - A World Food Programme convoy arrived here on Thursday, the first to make the journey by road since deadly floods ravaged this town in eastern Haiti on May 24.
Eleven white United Nations trucks carrying 35 tons of food, blankets, tents, generators and water sent by Japan took almost three hours to travel the 65km from Port-au-Prince to Fonds-Verrettes.
The trucks left the paved road that leads toward the border with the Dominican Republic and finished the final stretch of the trek, a rocky trail that included part of a riverbed that had flooded the town of 40 000 people.
Mayor Gerard Zetrenne oversaw the distribution with priest Pierre Etienne Belneau and 29 young volunteers.
"The distribution for today is to 1 700 families, about 8 000 individuals, through a group of eight heads of households who will receive collectively two 50kg sacks of rice, two 25kg sacks of cereal and a gallon of cooking oil every week," the WFP's Inigo Alvarez said.
The food should last more than three months.
Devastating floods and mudslides, triggered by torrential rains in the early hours of May 24, killed more than a thousand people in Haiti. Hundreds more died in neighbouring Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.