After wandering south to assail Jamaica and The Caymans, to the west, Hurricane Gustav ramps up to a Category 4 strength before storming into Cuba. North-east of Haiti Tropical Storm Hanna could threaten the north coast if it maintains its current heading.

UPDATE Sunday August 31- Tropical Storm HANNA has slowed and become slightly disorganized. The NHC expects this trend to reverse as the upper-low drops southward towards Haiti. The outer rainbands will, most likely, drench the northern regions of the island over the next few days. UPDATED IMAGES BELOW

Satellite image of Hurricane Gustav August 26, 2008

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UPDATE Sunday August 31 - Tropical Storm HANNA has slowed and become slightly disorganized. The NHC expects this trend to reverse as the upper-low drops southward towards Haiti. The outer rainbands will, most likely, drench the northern regions of the island over the next few days.

Will Hurricane Hanna threaten Haiti?

Three new storms are being watched by hurricane battered Haiti as the death toll mounts in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. What was a relatively quiet Hurricane season for Haiti changed dramatically when a tropical wave surprised everyone and instantly gained strength and became Tropical Storm Fay, leaving a trail of death across the island.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida was forecasting that Tropical Storm Hanna will reach hurricane strength soon and that it will turn more northerly (295º) from its current westward heading (270º) taking it well north of Haiti. Earlier this week the NHC had to significantly modify its forecast track for Gustav as it took a southerly route after leaving Haiti, putting Jamaica in its deadly path which they had forecast Gustav to miss just a few days earlier.

In less than two weeks Gustav roared into the southern coat and lingered over the Southwest part of the island. The outer rain bands of Gustav were still hanging over the the most battered and saturated regions late yesterday causing further life-threatening mudslides.

For some unknown reason the major news media have been deflecting the reports away from the situation in Haiti in an attempt to reclaim the headlines during the lead-up to the Republican Convention in Minnesota on Monday. Even the Haiti-based stringers seemed to place more emphasis on the effects of Gustav to the US economy than its significant threat to life on the island where they are based.

While Gustav was barreling down on Haiti, to the US media, the big story was that the price of a barrel of oil went up from $114 to $115. For its part, the Red Cross put out one story — from a NGO affiliate — describing the known casualties and extensive damage to the infrastructure, recommending a comprehensive effort to protect life and property.

The next day — August 29 — the Red Cross released their own report that amounted up to a "fluff piece," claiming that the intervention of the Red Cross teams "saved lives." The Red Cross report did not report any deaths or damage, in this article, even though the corporate media was already reporting that over 60 Haitians were killed by Hurricane Gustav.

Adding to the already crippling effects of malnutrition and poverty evident in Haiti today is a crumbling infrastructure, neither of which has apparently improved despite well-publicized international aid programs totaling more than $3 billion over the past four years. Critics have once again begun to ask what has happened to the aid money if the living conditions of Haitians continues to decline whether through grinding poverty or preventable deaths during the hurricane season.

In contrast, the cash-strapped and economically isolated country of Cuba rarely has any casualties at all — even in comparison to figures in the USA — from massive hurricanes that frequently tear across the largest Island in the Caribbean. This is owing to their outstanding hurricane awareness and volunteer mobilization programs. Hurricane Gustav will storm into the southwest coast of the La Habana Provence and Isla de la Juventud at Category 4 strength. It is likely that the capital of Havana will see hurricane force winds.

As if the threat of these two storms isn't enough, two more storms are forming further out in the Atlantic off of the west coast of Africa. It's possible that the upcoming week could see the threat of four named Atlantic storms at one time adding Ike, then Josephine to the lineup in Hurricane Alley. The tropical wave south of the Cape Verde Islands shows the most likelihood of developing into a significant storm soon become the first significant "Cape Verde hurricane" since Hurricane Ivan in 2004 which caused catastrophic damage to Grenada and heavy damage to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and the western tip of Cuba. Later Ivan meandered across the southern United States and was estimated to cause over $13 billion in damage.

The threat of Hurricane Gustav to the Gulf States of the USA is being discussed by the Republicans in deciding if they might delay their convention next week while the news media is distracted by the impact of the two storms. "The federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago is considered a low point of the Bush administration…" according to the reporting from Voice of America.

---- BOOKMARK Haiti Action.net Tropical Cyclone Page for latest updates

HaitiAction.net will host a page with many Tropical Cyclone resources so you can find the latest information when you are searching for current updates. We suggest that you bookmark that page for this busy 2008 Hurricane Season.

Previous Hurrican Gustav reports:

Dangerous Hurricane Gustav will hit Haiti Aug 25

Haiti's crops will be devastated by Hurricane Gustav Aug 26

View the latest NOAA observations
near Hurricane Gustav and Hanna

Daniel Tillias of Pax Christi explained the goals of the demonstration in Haiti last week marking the one-year anniversary of Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s abduction, "Friends and family of Lovinsky are right now in the streets calling [on] the government to put out a report to say clearly what happened to Lovinsky. If he's dead or if he's in a secret jail somewhere…that they have to do something to release him so he can go back to his family."

More information, resources and links can be found on the HaitiAction.net Tropical Cyclone Page

For the latest advisories from the National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml?

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Tropical Cyclone Breakpoints - Kiskeya

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