Hurricane Tomas begins lashing coast of Haiti

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Hurricane Tomas is seen as it churns towards Haiti in this enhanced NOAA satellite image taken at 8:45 a.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 5, 2010.

Updated: Fri Nov. 05 2010 08:08:08

CTV.ca News Staff

Hurricane Tomas has only begun to lash Haiti, and already the storm has been blamed for at least one death.
A report on Haitian radio early Friday, citing the Interior Ministry, said that a man drowned while trying to drive through a swollen river in the western department of Grand-Anse.
As Tomas veered toward Haiti early Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami reported the storm's maximum sustained winds at 135 km/h. It was moving northeast at approximately 15 km/h.
"Tomas has regained hurricane strength," the NHC said in a bulletin. "The most significant threat from this tropical cyclone should continue to be heavy rainfall which could produce flash flooding and life-threatening mudslides over portions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the next couple of days."
Forecasters expect the storm to bring a surge of waves that could raise the water up to one metre above normal tidal levels, as well as a deluge of between 12 and 25 centimetres of rain across much of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Civil protection authorities in Haiti have been warning residents of the country's makeshift tent cities to find safer accommodations. But the Associated Press reports that few of the country's 1.3 million displaced earthquake survivors have heeded the warnings, fearing the loss of their few possessions and the prospect of not being allowed to return should they leave.
Four civil protection buses left a camp in the Canape-Vert district Thursday night with only five passengers aboard, for example.
In an interview from Haiti, World Vision's director of programs said residents of the impoverished island nation are well-versed in the threat of severe weather.
"This is not a new development in terms of people being at risk, infrastructure has been low since the country started," Sabrina Pourmand told CTV's Canada AM, explaining that what's changed is the fact so many are now living with the barest of shelter.
"Folks do know that this is a risk to be out in the open, but we've got a new development on our hands here with people being forced to live in tent cities for the past ten months."
Because many of the country's makeshift camps have been set up on private lands, residents living there have been under constant threat of eviction. According to a September report from the UN, 29 per cent of 1,268 camps in Haiti have been forcibly closed in the months since the January 12 quake.
Tomas passed east of Jamaica late Thursday night, and is expected to cross over southwestern Haiti before crossing the strait dividing that island nation from Cuba. Forecasters expect the storm to intensify today, before the onset of a weakening trend on Saturday.
Hurricane warnings are currently in effect for Haiti, the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeastern Bahamas and the Guantanamo province of Cuba.
Tomas killed at least 14 people when it slammed the eastern Caribbean country of St. Lucia as a hurricane Saturday. The government has already pegged the cost of repairing the damages at approximately $500 million.