PORT-AU-PRINCE - Tropical Storm Isaac battered impoverished Haiti Saturday, leaving at least one person dead, as southern Florida braced for a possible hurricane during the US Republican convention. With winds of up to 60 miles (95km) per hour, the storm was expected to sweep over eastern Cuba later Saturday and to become a hurricane on Sunday as it nears Florida, according to the US National Hurricane Centre. An eight-year-old Haitian girl died when a wall collapsed at her home, a government official, Gonzague Day, told AFP. She is the first known death related to the storm.
Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere even before the earthquake killed 250,000 people, and some 400,000 are still living in tent camps in and around the devastated capital Port-au-Prince. Haiti officials said Saturday that more than 3,300 families had been evacuated to temporary shelters, including many from the camps which lack working toilets and safe drinking water.