Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN)

The hurricane’s punishing rain and wind were already being felt as the storm churned offshore.

As of 2 p.m. ET, the storm’s center was about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba, and about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Port-au-Prince, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

In the westernmost tip of Haiti, which juts into the Caribbean Sea and is closest to the hurricane, there were reports from the town of Jeremie of destroyed houses, downed trees and flooded rivers, said Marie-Eve Bertrand, communications manager for CARE in the nation.

Also, she said, CARE workers near the coastal city of Leogane reported the area has been inundated with nearly 5 feet of water. Flooding from a nearby river had entered some tent encampments and temporary shelters, Bertrand said

Tomas also was being felt in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital.

“It’s been raining heavily all night,” said Leonard Doyle, the spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.

“The rain is a huge problem where we are,” Doyle told CNN on Friday morning. “There’s every danger that you could have flash flooding. Every danger.”

Relief worker Roseann Dennery of Samaritan’s Purse was near Cabaret, about 20 miles north of Port-au-Prince, on Friday morning, touring camps that hold some of the 1 million people left homeless by January’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake, which killed 250,000 people.

“It’s almost eerie,” she said. “It’s rainy, it’s dark and there’s really not a lot of movement.”

The few people moving from tent to tent were wrapped in sheets and cloth to provide some protection against the constant rain, she said. The ground is soaked and some low-lying areas have minor flooding.

Some people were riding the storm out in open-air community centers with supposedly sturdy roofs, she said. But many were just huddling in their tents, waiting for the wind and rain to pass. Most don’t have anywhere else to go.

“A lot of them do not have families or relatives,” she said.

She said her agency, an international Christian relief organization, has evacuated 30 staff members from Leogane out of fear of mud slides there.

Michael Dockrey, the director in Haiti for the International Medical Corps, also expressed his deep concern Friday.

“Particularly,” he told CNN, “with mud slides that can cut off whole communities. We have prepositioned medical supplies, tents, tarps and staff in areas that we know will be isolated.”

Aid workers already were struggling to keep up with the cholera outbreak, which has killed nearly 450 people and hospitalized about 7,000. The bacterial disease causes diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to deadly dehydration within hours.

“It’s obviously stretched us all real thin,” Dockrey said. “We could certainly use more help … as can all the other responders.”

The hurricane will only make matters worse.

“Even if Tomas only brushes Haiti, it may exacerbate the epidemic, facilitating the spread of the disease into and throughout metropolitan Port-au-Prince, where a third of the population remains homeless and in camps,” the International Organization for Migration said.

Some Haitians scurried Friday morning through the rain-pelted streets of Port-au-Prince, looking for somewhere to seek shelter, reported CNN en Espanol’s Diulka Perez. They have been told to go to churches or the homes of friends and family, but there are significantly fewer churches or homes still standing after January’s massive earthquake.

There is also no public transportation available to take people anywhere, Perez reported.

The problem is compounded, she said, because there’s no central source of information. Haitians are having to rely on word of mouth to obtain information.

Nor are Haitians eager to leave their tent shelters, because the government cannot guarantee they will have someplace to return to after the storm passes.

Tomas became a Category 1 hurricane as it approached Haiti early Friday, forecasters said.

The eye of the storm passed near western Haiti Friday morning and was expected to move near or over eastern Cuba later in the day. It is forecast to be near or over the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands Friday night or early Saturday.

The biggest threats were mud slides and flash flooding, said CNN meteorologist Reynolds Wolf. Port-au-Prince is bounded on three sides by hills, and rain runoff could cause flooding, Wolf said. The low-lying port city also borders the Caribbean Sea.

Tomas was moving north-northeast at 12 mph (19 kph), the hurricane center said. Winds from the storm remained at 85 mph (140 kph), the Hurricane Center said.

Rain associated with the storm started falling on Haiti on Thursday afternoon as aid agencies scrambled to move as many people as possible into storm shelters.

Deb Ingersoll of the American Refugee Committee said her organization was helping disseminate information and encourage people to leave, but added, “To be honest, I’m not sure many of them will.”

“They’re very entrenched here,” she said, and many worry about losing their possessions.

“They’re looking at us like we’re crazy for telling them they should leave,” Ingersoll said. “They don’t seem to think this is an event. … Aid workers are far more worried than they are.”

Ingersoll said group members were dismantling tents in the center of camp to prevent them from becoming projectiles in the wind and encouraging residents to find family or friends who still have homes in which they can stay.

Tomas was forecast to dump 5 to 10 inches of rain on Haiti, with isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches in some areas. In addition, a storm surge in the warning area could raise water levels by as much as 8 feet above normal tide levels in areas of onshore winds, accompanied by “large and destructive waves,” the hurricane center said.

Many structures that would usually be used for storm shelters — schools and hospitals — are no longer standing. And many of Haiti’s homeless have no options.

As it did after the earthquake, the United States offered its assistance.

The U.S Agency for International Development had already prepositioned supplies, but rushed more into the country before the airport closed ahead of the storm, said Mark Ward, acting director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

“We had enough in the country for 100,000 people,” he said. “When it became clear within the last week that we were going to get a severe storm, we got a lot more in. We added enough to help another 25,000 people.”

Citing Haitian authorities, Ward said at a Friday briefing for reporters that about half the residents at temporary camps left those facilities overnight to stay with family or friends. He said the Haitian government has confirmed one fatality.

In addition, the U.S. Navy redirected the USS Iwo Jima to Haiti from Suriname, where the ship’s crew was conducting a four-month humanitarian mission.

Navy Capt. Thomas Negus, the commander of Continuing Promise, said the Iwo Jima was east of Haiti on Friday afternoon. Commanders were waiting for weather conditions to clear enough to allow the ship’s eight helicopters to begin flying over Haiti, looking for people and communities in need of immediate aid and scouting for damage that could slow the distribution of pre-positioned relief supplies.

“We will be poised to provide immediate life-saving should that be necessary,” Negus told journalists during a telephone call from the Iwo Jima.

In addition to search-and-rescue-trained helicopter crews, the ship is carrying more than 200 medical personnel and 60 Navy construction engineers who can help with recovery efforts. The ship is also carrying a 500-member Marine task force and personnel from nongovernmental relief agencies.

Negus, who participated in the Navy response to the earthquake, said he did not expect the damage from Tomas to be anywhere near as severe.

“It’s everyone’s prayer here that our capabilities will not be required,” Negus said. “But everyone should be very confident that we are prepared if they are.”

Tomas was previously a Category 2 hurricane and then weakened to a tropical depression before re-intensifying. Forecasters predict it will weaken again Saturday.

– Already devastated this year by a killer earthquake and a deadly cholera outbreak, Haiti began to feel the brute force Friday of Hurricane Tomas, which could dump up to 15 inches of rain and trigger flash floods and mudslides.

By Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh, CNN

November 5, 2010 3:53 p.m. EDT  

 Washington (CNN) — Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she will run for minority leader in the new Congress, even as some moderate and conservative Democrats insisted she should step aside.
“Many of our colleagues have called with their recommendations on how to continue our fight for the middle class, and have encouraged me to run for House Democratic Leader,” she said in a written statement. “Based on those discussions, and driven by the urgency of protecting health care reform, Wall Street reform, and Social Security and Medicare, I have decided to run.”
Pelosi initially announced her intentions via Twitter.
In the wake of Tuesday’s Republican takeover of the House, Democrats will move into the minority positions in the new Congress, which convenes in January.
Shortly after Pelosi’s announcement, House Majority Whip James Clyburn announced that he would be running for minority whip. Pelosi’s No. 2 man, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer — who is widely considered to be more moderate — will “spend the next few days talking to [House] members and getting their thoughts on him being minority whip,” according to his spokeswoman, Katie Grant.
A senior Democratic source told CNN that Hoyer is “in a nice way saying he is going to run against Clyburn.”
Moderate Democratic Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma was the latest to urge Pelosi to step aside and not run for House minority leader. He said he would support a more centrist candidate.
“I cannot in good conscience support Nancy Pelosi as our leader,” Boren told CNN. “I think that it is important for the Democratic Party to move in a new direction for the sake of our country. Democrats and Republicans need leaders who are going to work together.”
Boren’s public pressure for Pelosi to go follows similar comments from Democratic Reps. Heath Schuler of North Carolina and Jim Matheson of Utah, who also have said they would prefer a new, more moderate Democratic leader.
“I think based on the outcome of this election, we should all acknowledge what the American people said — and they are looking for change. And I think when you, as a political party, suffer losses of historic proportions, it makes sense to change things up,” Matheson told CNN. “Therefore, I don’t think she should be running for leader.”
Rep. Jason Altmire, a moderate Democrat from a conservative district in western Pennsylvania, agreed. “I am not voting for Nancy Pelosi,” he said.
“I don’t get the sense that Speaker Pelosi understands what happened on Tuesday. We lost middle America. The Democratic party got crushed,” Altmire told CNN.
He noted that many of his fellow Democrats in districts near his lost their seats.
Despite his opposition, Altmire, who voted against major pieces of Democratic legislation, including the health care bill, said Pelosi will easily be victorious in her quest to be minority leader.
But Democratic Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois said he would support Pelosi’s bid. “We’re in a political storm, but we don’t need to adopt an ‘any leader in a storm’ mentality,” Jackson said in a statement issued Friday. After Tuesday’s losses, moderate Democrats are now a very small part of the Democratic caucus. The bigger question, according to multiple Democratic sources, is what Pelosi’s fellow progressives want her to do. Americans United for Change, a progressive political organization, sent an e-mail notice to its members Friday morning asking them to send personal notes to Pelosi urging her to stay.
“Make sure she knows that we will support her,” said the e-mail.
“If she runs, she will win,” said one senior Democratic source.
A progressive Democrat told CNN he had talked to many of his colleagues about the situation in the past few days.
“It’s fair to say that for most progressives, their visceral place was that Nancy deserves to be the leader if she wants to be, but no one would have burst into tears if she decided not to,” said the congressman, who did not want to go on the record in order to protect private conversations.
The Pelosi supporter said she should not be blamed for the losses. Rather the setback was the result of a bad economy and, the supporter said, an ineffective job by the White House in selling Democratic achievements.
While Pelosi’s tireless fundraising has built a reservoir of support among Democratic lawmakers, several sources within the party said there are a number of progressive Democrats also who do not want her to run. Meanwhile, Rep. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who had been a staunch supporter of Pelosi, told a local television station that he wants Pelosi to step down as Democratic leader.
“I know that there is some thought that Nancy Pelosi may stay around,” Yarmuth said Thursday. “As good a leader as she has been, I don’t think she’s the right leader to take us forward.”
Shuler is considering challenging Pelosi if she runs, according to a number of Democratic sources. Because of the makeup of the Democratic caucus, few think he would win.
Several Democratic sources say they worry about this dragging out, especially given how public the Democrats’ dispute over Pelosi’s future is becoming.
On Thursday, Pelosi told the Huffington Post that she is getting a positive response from Democratic lawmakers because she has “kept the caucus together” and increased Democratic numbers in 2006 and 2008.
Matheson told CNN one of the political concerns is that it will be harder to recruit candidates to run in 2012 with Pelosi as the Democratic leader — especially those who just lost and may want to try to get their old seats back.

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