Haitian camps brace for massive storm

GlobalPost

The Haitian tent city is facing a battering with weather experts predicting heavy storms and dangerous flash flooding.

Tropical storm Emily is headed towards makeshift camps in Haiti where around 300,000 impoverished Haitians are living following the January 2010 earthquake.

(More from GlobalPost on the Haiti earthquake aftermath: Haiti's cholera epidemic twice as bad as predicted, say researchers)

According to the Telegraph, U.S. weather experts warned of "torrential rain," "life-threatening flash floods and mud slides" and 20 inches of rain running down eroded hillsides once the brunt of Emily reaches Haiti.

Officials have urged the evacuation of the tent cities and "are asking people in refugee camps… to evacuate vulnerable locations," said Haiti's civil defense chief Alta Jean-Baptiste.

Haiti's weather service chief Ronald Semelfort warned Emily would be "a great danger for the country still fragile from the January 2010 earthquake."

“When there is ordinary rain we can't stay here because water is running through the tents and no one can sleep," said Wideline Azemar, a 42-year-old mother of four who lives under a tarpaulin in a squalid camp for homeless quake survivors in Port-au-Prince.

"Now they're talking about a storm with a lot of wind and rain. I really don't know what to do … . Only God knows what he will do for us," she told Reuters news agency.

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