U.N. prepares aid for Caribbean

United Nations relief agencies are heading up a global mission to bring food, shelter and construction materials to Caribbean islands battered by superstorm Sandy last week – a belated response by the world body whose New York headquarters and staff were themselves hard hit by the deluge.

After a three-day closure amid the torrential rains and disrupted power, communications and transportation, U.N. agencies have swung into action to organize emergency aid to Haiti and coordinate the dispatch of relief supplies throughout the Caribbean.

More than 1.2 million Haitians are facing “food insecurity” and at least 15,000 homes were destroyed when the huge storm’s drenching periphery lashed one of the world’s poorest nations, where about 350,000 were still homeless and sheltering in tents nearly three years after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.

In New York, U.N. officials said they had reports of at least 54 Haitians killed as a result of the storm.

At least 11 people were reportedly killed in Cuba, where the storm damaged or destroyed 188,000 homes and inflicted severe damage on about 245,000 acres of the vital sugar crop in the eastern part of the island, a U.N. report estimated Wednesday. The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation appealed to the government of President Raul Castro to allow foreign relief agencies to bring food and supplies to the stricken island.

Storm-related deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, with the U.N. reporting at least 71 killed across the Caribbean in Sandy’s wake.

Los Angeles Times