A makeshift camp for the homeless set up following the January quake which ravaged Port-au-Prince was already swamped after Hurricane Tomas began dumping rains over the country late Thursday.

The tent city near the ruined presidential palace, home to thousands of dispossessed, was already swimming in several inches (centimeters) of water, radio Vision 2000 said.

"The wind has not yet picked up, but the rains are falling harder and harder in Port-au-Prince," aid worker Marianna Franco, from the non-governmental organization ACTED told AFP.

One person was killed late Thursday when he tried to cross a swollen river by car, Interior Minister Paul-Antoine Bien-Aime said.

Tomas is forecast to bring five to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rain to much of Haiti, with isolated areas being drenched with 15 inches (38 centimeters), US weather experts said.

Residents in the battered capital were trying to tie down the tarpulins and plastic sheeting which serve as roofs to their ramshackle homes.

And in the slums of Petionville, in the north of the capital, residents were cutting off branches dangerously hanging down from trees.

ACTED has pre-positioned 8,000 emergency kits in five sites around the country which include tarpulins, ropes and poles to help rebuild ruined tents.

"These 8,000 kits could help some 43,000 people," said Marianna Franco.

Tomas regained hurricane strength Friday as it churned in the Caribbean, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said, adding it was packing winds of about 85 miles (135 kilometers) an hour.

The category one storm was passing close to the southwestern peninsula of Haiti early Friday, with the center due to move past western Haiti.

"Hurricane conditions are likely occurring over portions of the southwestern peninsula of Haiti," the hurricane center warned.

earlier related report
Aid agencies race against Haiti hurricane
Geneva (AFP) Nov 5, 2010 - Aid agencies were racing against time Friday before the full force of Hurricane Tomas hit Haiti, threatening 1.3 million earthquake refugees huddled in tent cities, a UN offical said.

The United Nations had activated its major disaster crisis unit Friday, Byrs said, adding that the first aerial missions to monitor the extent of the huricane's impact would be flown Saturday.

"It's a race against time, there's not a moment to lose so were are ready for the arrival of the hurricane," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told journalists.

"United Nations agencies are on a war footing because they believe half a million people at least will be affected," she said as heavy rains and wind began lashing the island.

Byrs said this estimate could be much higher given the number of people still displaced by January's earthquake in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

The heavy destruction of forest cover in Haiti could also make the situation worse, with no trees to prevent mudslides, she said.

Particularly at risk were people on the coast towards Gonaives and Cap Haitien, as well as those still under tents round the capital of Port au Prince", she said.

OCHA and the World Health Organisation also fear that storm-polluted water could worsen the current epidemic of cholera in Haiti which has so far killed nearly 450 people, according to local authorities.

"The sanitary conditions in many areas combined with the huge amount of rains or flooding are likely to accelerate the infection rate," WHO spokewoman Faida Chaib told AFP.

While the WHO "does not expect the overall caseload to rise significantly ... "the infection rate will just grow earlier and faster," she said.

"Humanitarian aid workers have tried to prepare themselves as best they can, but coping with three disasters at once, the consequences of the earthquake, the cholera and now the hurricane, is a real challenge," Byrs said.

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