Hurricane adds to Haiti's woes; 4 dead

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Hurricane Tomas flooded camps of earthquake refugees, turning some into squalid islands Friday as it battered Haiti's rural western tip, while largely sparing the vast homeless encampments in the shattered capital.

Aid workers rushed to guard against the spread of disease as the storm moved into the region where thousands are infected with cholera.

Driving 85 mph winds and a lashing storm surge battered Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince that was 90 percent destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

In one refugee camp, dozens of families carried their belongings through thigh-high floodwaters to a taxi stand on higher ground, huddling under blankets and a sign that read "Welcome to Leogane."

Four deaths were confirmed by Haitian officials, all people attempting to cross rivers by car or on foot in the mountainous region to the west of Leogane, on Haiti's far southwestern tip. Two more people were missing in Leogane.

Tomas had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean. On Friday it came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, pummeling Haiti's southern peninsula, before moving on to the rest of the country, eastern Cuba and the Bahamas.

It could be days before the storm's impact is known as reports filter in from isolated mountain towns cut off by the flooding.

"We have two catastrophes that we are managing. The first is the hurricane and the second is cholera," President Rene Preval told the nation in a television and radio address.

He could have included a third. Ten months after the magnitude-7 earthquake shook the capital to the ground, the devastation can still be seen in scores of collapsed buildings and sprawling refugee camps.