Hanna may not be a severe storm when it reaches North Carolina, but it was catastrophic for a low-lying port city in Haiti where a Raleigh-based aid organization has worked for years.

At least 137 people are reported dead in Haiti as a result of the storm, 80 of them in the city of Gonaives on the west coast north of Port-au-Prince.

Flooding that began Monday night destroyed homes and forced people onto the second floors of buildings. It cut off the city by washing out a road that connects it with the north and creating a lake over the highway to the south. The water had receded some by Thursday afternoon, but many people were still stranded on rooftops.

"I have talked with people who have not eaten since Monday," said Stan Weibe, director of the nonprofit Hearts and Hands for Haiti. "The only hope right now of getting food and fresh water into Gonaives is if the United Nations is able to fly them in on helicopters."

Weibe -- pronounced "Weeb" -- worked in Haiti for about five years in the 1980s as an accountant for several organizations. He moved to Raleigh in 1989 and worked with Building Together Ministries to develop an aid program in Haiti.

After Tropical Storm Jeanne in September 2004, Raleigh-area churches and others gave about $70,000 to Weibe's aid program to help rebuild houses in Gonaives. Mudslides and flooding killed about 3,000 people in the city, according to Reuters news service.

As a result of that effort, Weibe said, he spun off his program into a separate nonprofit. Weibe and his wife oversee the organization, but Weibe says decisions about how the facilities operate and where money is needed most are made by four pastors who live and work in and around Gonaives.

The Weibes are supported by friends and family, Weibe said, so all that's donated to Hearts and Hands for Haiti go to the three schools, seven churches and the children's home the organization built and supports.

Even when the weather is calm, Weibe said, the need is great in Gonaives and the rural areas that surround it. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Robert Logan of Logan Trading Co. in Raleigh, treasurer of Hearts and Hands for Haiti, said he has visited Gonaives several times with the organization and has seen the struggle.

"They're 100 years behind us at least, the whole nation," Logan said. "But they are just delightful people, joyful people, for the most part. But they are desperate people, and they seem to be able to smile in the face of that. It's an inspiration every time I go."

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