Hurricane Matthew roared into the southwestern coast of Haiti yesterday, threatening a largely rural corner of the impoverished nation with devastating storm conditions as it headed north toward Cuba and the eastern coast of Florida.
The dangerous Category 4 storm made landfall at about dawn on Haiti’s southern peninsula, where many people live along the coast in shacks of wood and corrugated steel that stand little chance of withstanding the force of the system’s maximum sustained winds of 230kph.
Matthew was also expected to bring 60cm of rain, and up to 100cm in isolated places, along with up to a 3m storm surge and battering waves, said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Photo: Reuters
“They are getting everything a major hurricane can throw at them,” Feltgen said.
The storm was moving along the Windward Passage between Haiti and Jamaica, where it was also dumping heavy rain that caused flooding in parts of the nation.
It was headed for southeastern Cuba and then into the Bahamas.
As dawn broke, people in the south coast tourist town of Port Salut described howling winds and big waves, slamming the beaches and washing over the coastal road.
“The winds are making so many bad noises. We’re just doing our best to stay calm,” Jenniflore Desrosiers said as she huddled with her family in her fragile cinder-block home, which had sprung numerous leaks from pelting rain.
Haiti’s civil protection office said a number of south-coast towns partially flooded overnight. Landslides and downed trees on roads were preventing movement in numerous areas.
The few places that were on the electrical grid had apparently lost power and the mobile phone service was spotty.
Haiti’s civil protection agency reported one death, a fisherman who drowned in rough water churned up by the storm. That raised Matthew’s death toll to at least three.
One man died in Colombia and a teenager was killed in St Vincent and the Grenadines as the storm moved through the Caribbean.
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