"If we keep going like this, the whole country is going to crash," moaned Mario Marcelus, who was trying to reach his family in Gonaives but didn't dare cross the floodwaters.
Rescue convoys had been trying to drive into Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, but kept turning back because lakes formed over every road into town. On Wednesday, Associated Press journalists accompanied U.N. troops who used Zodiac boats to reach Gonaives, which accounted for most of the 2,000 victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004.
Floodwaters covered some homes up to their roofs. In a cemetery, only the tops of tombs glimmered beneath the soupy water. The carcasses of dead animals, including a donkey and a cow, floated amid debris as flies swarmed.
About 150 people were crowded into a church. Most retreated to a large balcony above the floodwater, where they waited in misery for the waters to recede.
"There is no food, no water, no clothes," said the 37-year-old pastor, Arnaud Dumas. "I want to know what I'm supposed to do. ...
We haven't found anything to eat in two, three days. Nothing at all."
About two-thirds of Gonaives was covered in mud, although it was difficult to determine the extent of the flooding from the air, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Matt Moorlag said after planes conducted flyovers.
On the ground, men used pieces of styrofoam as kickboards to try to swim out of town. People waited to help along the shores of the newly formed lake, and Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said people stranded on rooftops were becoming increasingly desperate.
"It is a great movement of panic in the city," Bien-Aime told AP as Brazilian soldiers assigned to the 9,000-member U.N. force carried him onto an idling speedboat.
About 1,500 people huddled in a shelter they nicknamed the "Haiti Hilton." Director Jean-Noel Preval said there was no food and was running out of drinking water.
His cousin Jezula Preval gave birth at the shelter to a healthy boy on Tuesday night. Jezula Preval, 23, said she tried to hold out at home, but the rain drove her out and floodwaters eventually swallowed her house.
"I lost everything, even the baby's clothes," she said.
The situation was dire elsewhere in Haiti as well. Floodwaters swamped a hospital near southwestern Les Cayes, and nurses moved patients to higher floors. At least 5,000 people in Les Cayes were in shelters, said Jean-Renand Valiere, a coordinator for the civil protection department.
The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince declared a disaster situation, freeing US$100,000 in emergency aid, spokeswoman Mari Tolliver said. She said hygiene kits, plastic sheeting and water jugs for up to 5,000 families are expected to arrive from Miami on Thursday.
"The biggest problem right now is just getting access to affected areas," she said.
Even as Hanna moved offshore, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tropical Storm Ike, in the central North Atlantic, would gain strength as it approached the Caribbean and "could reach major hurricane status" within five days.
Its course remained uncertain, but the most likely track passed just north of the Haitian coastline.
