Hurricane Tomas in Haiti

(CNN) -- After dealing a walloping blow to Haiti, where at least six people died and a number of homes were destroyed, Tropical Storm Tomas was weakening rapidly Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.
Tomas was downgraded to a tropical storm early Sunday. As of 11 a.m. ET, its maximum sustained winds were at 60 mph (95 kph) with higher gusts. It was not posing an immediate threat to land; the center of Tomas was about 525 kilometers southwest of Bermuda and moving north at about 6 mph (9 kph).
"Additional weakening is forecast, and Tomas is expected to lose its tropical characteristics by this evening," the Hurricane Center said.
In Haiti, a nation still grappling with the effects of a killer earthquake and a deadly cholera outbreak this year, Tomas ruined houses and turned some streets into rivers. Six people were also killed by the storm, according to the Haitian Civil Protection Authority.
January's 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed 250,000 people and left 1 million more homeless. Many of those Haitians have been living in tent camps, and aid workers had been working in recent days to move the residents to safer housing, which was difficult to find.

 

 

Aid workers were already struggling to keep up with the cholera outbreak, which has killed 501 people since the first cases were reported in October. An additional 7,000 are hospitalized. The bacterial disease causes diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to deadly dehydration within hours.
In Leogane, west of Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince, residents waded in knee-deep water after Tomas. Box trucks got stuck in water, said relief worker Roseann Dennery of Samaritan's Purse.
While the flooding receded somewhat over the weekend, the threat of waterborne disease remained a concern.
"Samaritan's Purse is moving quickly to set up cholera treatment centers in areas where there currently aren't any, and where new cases are appearing as the bacteria continues to spread," Dennery said.
Mudslides also remain a risk because many of the nation's mountains have been stripped of vegetation, which means rain can flow downhill relatively unimpeded, said CNN meteorologist Reynolds Wolf.
"We could see mudslides a week after the storm has passed," Wolf said.

Tomas has also dumped more than 10 inches of rain in the Dominican Republic.

-This story makes me feel very bad for the Haitians.  They have had to deal with so many disasters this year that it their spirits are so low.  Most of the people are still trying to recover from the huge earthquake in January and the cholera break out.  Now they were hit by Hurrican Tomas and 10 inches of rain.  They are not going to be able to bounce back from this very quickly because they were still down from the prior disasters.  It is just sad that this country continues to recieve this terrible luck.  Hopefully the new year will bring them more luck.