Food aid starts to arrive in flooded Haiti town

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Food and relief supplies began arriving in the Haitian city of Gonaives on Friday as floodwaters receded after killing 136 people in the impoverished country and sending thousands fleeing to their rooftops.

The United Nations said it would launch an appeal for emergency funds to help up to 600,000 Haitians while the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed for 3.8 million Swiss francs ($3.4 million) in donations for Haiti.

A freighter with food supplied by the U.N.'s World Food Program and carrying other supplies such as drinking water docked in Gonaives, where the streets were thick with mud and littered with the carcasses of drowned animals after four days of floods.

It was the first of several vessels and aircraft, including helicopters, set to arrive with aid for Gonaives, the WFP said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas where most people scrape by on less than $2 a day, has been hit by three successive storms in less than a month. Tropical Storm Fay killed more than 50 people last month while Hurricane Gustav left at least 75 people dead.

Tropical Storm Hanna this week sent up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) of muddy water pouring through Gonaives. At least 136 people died, most of them in the town, the Caribbean country's civil protection office said.

Hanna had pulled away from Haiti on Friday and was set to crash ashore on the U.S. East Coast in the Carolinas early on Saturday.

In its wake, however, came fierce Hurricane Ike, which could dip close to northern Haiti before taking aim at south Florida, Cuba or potentially the Gulf of Mexico next week.