Haiti braces for tropical storm Tomas

(msnbc.msn.com)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At least 21 people were missing or dead after Tropical Storm Tomas swept over the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia as it headed toward Jamaica and the tent cities of Haiti.

An American tourist was reportedly among those killed.

Tomas weakened to a Tropical Depression early Wednesday, but was forecast to pick up strength over the next two days and a hurricane watch for Jamaica was issued by the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Haiti, the Dominican Republic and southeastern Cuba were also warned to monitor Tomas's progress with forecasters warned of a "significant threat" to those areas later this week.

At 5 a.m. ET, the storm was about 410 miles south-southwest of Haiti's Port-au-Prince and moving west-northwest at about 5 mph.

As Tomas churned over the open Caribbean sea, officials appealed to Haitians in tent camps to start evacuating, encouraging them to travel to the homes of family or friends.

"We have launched an appeal for voluntary evacuation, particularly in the camps," said Alta Jean-Baptiste, the director of the Haiti's Civil Protection Office. "We have plans to evacuate the camps but we won't be able to evacuate everybody."

Nadia Lochard, the coordinator for civil protection in Haiti's western department, said authorities were showing camp dwellers how to properly tie up their tents before evacuating.

She said even heavy rains in the country's southern region could potentially impact Port-au-Prince since several of Haiti's rivers originate in the area and extend to the capital.

In the tent camp of Corail-Cesselesse, managers held a "loudspeaker meeting" with megaphones to tell residents about the evacuation order, said Bryant Castro, the American Refugee Committee staffer managing the camp.

Residents were told to seek any home they could find and are expected to start leaving as soon as Wednesday.

Corail has already been affected by a storm which collapsed 344 tents and sent 1,700 people fleeing for new shelter.

The dangers have only become clearer since.

"I would say ... that insufficient analysis was done on exploring all the options before selecting the Corail site," said Castro, the camp's manager. "The Corail site is located on a flood plain, and hydrologically it's not a sound location."

Oxfam spokeswoman Julie Schindall said aid workers are concerned about delivering services to the camp if roads from Port-au-Prince flood.

"This goes back to the original thing: No, (Corail is) not a safe place to live," she said. "We knew a hurricane was going to come — this is Haiti, this always happens — and we have not had a level of reconstruction that gets people under tents into houses."
At this point there is little to be done before the storm.

Jonel Romelus, a 36-year-old mason who moved to Corail, said his family — his wife, two daughters ages 2 and 5, a sister and nephews — will stay in the camp unless the government can provide shelter. They have nowhere else to go.

"God will protect me. I'm not going to be the only one (staying at Corail). If something happens, we'll deal with it," he said. "If they could have moved more quickly and built more houses, it would have been safer."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.