Jacobs joins the Batey Relief Alliance and Red Cross to provide assistance.
Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs (D-Flatbush) has joined with the Batey Relief Alliance and the American Red Cross to assist victims of the recent devastating floods and landslides that have caused more than 2000 deaths in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

?I am deeply saddened by the massive amount of damage and loss of life that the Haitian and Dominican people are dealing with right now,? said Jacobs. ?The personal losses these families have suffered go way beyond Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is felt by many relatives and friends in our community and around the United States.? Jacobs added: ?I am joining the Batey Relief Alliance and the American Red Cross in making this urgent appeal to everyone to assist during this time of tragedy and hardship. We must join together to get immediate relief to these people.?

Ulrick Gaillard, Executive Director of the Batey Relief Alliance has described the region as ?devastated? and urges those who are able to send donations and for others he suggests: ?Take the time to find out how to help. Contact a neighbor who may have family in the region and ask how you can help,? he said.

Immediate monetary support is urgently needed to help ship, ground transport and distribute medical, food and hygiene supplies to the victims. In addition to monetary donations, collections are being taken of clothing, food and personal items that will be shipped directly to the victims in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. You can help by:

1. Making tax-deductible donations online at DONATE NOW!, or mailing your ckecks payable to Batey Relief Alliance, P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, New York 11230.

2. Making a material donation of children?s clothing, medical supplies, non-perishable food items such as rice, beans, cooking oil, powdered milk, canned-food, blankets, sheets, towels and soaps. Items can be dropped off at the Office of Assemblywoman Rhoda S. Jacobs, 2294 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, between Avenues I and J. Please call ahead for larger item donations (718) 434-0446.

For more information about the Batey Relief Alliance, please visit our website at www.bateyrelief.org. You may also contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026.

More than 3,000 people have been killed ? 1,500 more still missing from a week-long floods and landslides that devastated Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Hundreds of unidentified corpses are being buried on a tiny island surrounded by crocodiles, others in shallow mass graves 3 to 4-feet deep. ?This is a tragedy that demands the immediate attention of everyone,? said Ulrick Gaillard, Executive Director.

“We were sleeping and didn’t hear the water coming in, then I felt it on my face and tried to get out with my family. And that’s the last thing I remember,” said Alexandro Novas, 35. He was found the next day, two miles from his home, with gashes in his legs. His wife was killed, and his two children, ages 5 and 3, are presumed dead. “Now I don’t have my family and I don’t have a house to live. I’m lost?I wish I were dead,” added a tearful Novas.

He and 500 others from Dominican?s town La Quarenta have taken over an abandoned government housing project, where the buildings — roofless concrete shells ?
are upwind of the stench of rotting bodies.

More than 20,000 are left homeless with villages and homes completely wiped out. Among onsite doctors’ concerns is the possibility for hunger and epidemic outbreaks in the areas, and the near-certain likelihood of discovering more bodies ? those that have been washed away from local cemeteries and sent further down rivers towards nearby lakes.

The flooding has ravaged the crops and livestock of poor farmers who scratch out a living and piled misery onto already desperate conditions in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Average per capita annual income for Haiti’s 8 million people is about $300.

Haiti?s economy has been devastated by decades of international economic embargoes and political instabilities that led to the recent overthrow of the country?s first democratically-elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to observers, the way in which Aristide was overthrown ? with tacit American support ? meant that Haiti’s new interim government remains unrecognized by CARICOM, the economic community of Caribbean nations. So Haiti’s neighbors, including Jamaica, have been wary of providing assistance.

The Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is making an urgent fundraising appeal to help ship, ground transport and distribute food, clothes and medicines to the severely affected populations; provide emergency medical assistance; and rebuild the affected areas. You can help by making tax-deductible donations online at DONATE NOW!, or mailing your ckecks payable to Batey Relief Alliance, P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, New York 11230.

Other support in medicines, vitamins, medical and food supplies will come from BRA?s partners, including Heart to Heart, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Direct Relief International and Food for the Poor.

For more information on the flood situation and BRA, visit BRA?s website at www.bateyrelief.org. You may also contact Ulrick Gaillard at (917) 627-5026 or bra@bateyrelief.org.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Days of heavy rain have caused hundreds of deaths and destroyed homes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At least 280 people have been killed, many of them swept away when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, authorities in the neighboring Caribbean countries said on Tuesday. Other reports on the devastation also include some bateyes in the region of San Pedro de Macoris. Rescue workers said more dead could be buried under the mud and debris.

About 110 bodies had been recovered from the Jimani area of western Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti, and some 200 people were believed to be missing, officials there said. The devastation in Jimani occurred when a river burst its banks early on Monday, sending floodwaters rushing through several poor neighborhoods and destroying hundreds of fragile homes. About 50 of the dead in the Jimani area were Haitians who had crossed the border to live and work.

In Haiti, up to 100 people were killed in the town of Fond Verettes and the surrounding countryside, and 40 more died in the southeast region of the country in the floods of the past two days, sources close to Haiti’s Civil Protection Office said.

Twenty others died near the Haitian-Dominican border in the south of the country, said a spokesman for a local humanitarian organization. The island of Hispaniola, which the two countries share, has been lashed with torrential rains in recent days. Many of the victims died when landslides and floods caused their houses to collapse, witnesses said.

Haiti, with a population of about 8 million, is the poorest country in the Americas. The Dominican Republic, with a population of 8.5 million, is more prosperous, but parts of the country, such as the Jimani area, are still desperately poor.

Several survivors told local media they had been asleep when the floods hit their homes. “It was all very fast, I couldn’t do anything,” said Ramon Perez Feliz, who lost his sister and two nephews. “I was saved because the current threw me away, out of the river bed,” he said.

Flooding in other parts of the Dominican Republic killed four people and forced thousands of people from their homes, officials said. Power was cut in many areas and crops were reported waterlogged, but officials said that it was too early to give estimates of damage.

The Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is calling upon everyone to make a tax-deductible gift to help provide emergency medical, food and shelter assistance to the affected. Please send in your check payable to Batey Relief Alliance, at P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230. You may also make a gift online by clicking on our DONATE NOW! For more information, please visit us at www.bateyrelief.org, or contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026.

Story by Reuters, Jose Ramon Torres, Oscar Quezada y Panky Corsino/El Caribe 5/25/04