Hurricane Matthew: Death Toll Over 800 in Haiti; Obama Seeks Support of Citizens 

Port-au-Prince (Haiti)/Daytona Beach (Florida): Monster Hurricane Matthew, the most powerful Caribbean storm in a decade, killed more than 800 people and left tens of thousands homeless in Haiti before it churned northwards off Georgia and South Carolina in southeast US on early Saturday, but spared Florida a direct hit. As Matthew threatened the US coast, President Barack Obama urged Americans to mobilize in support of Haiti, where a million people were in need of assistance after the latest disaster to strike the western hemisphere's poorest nation.

President Obama warned this morning that the devastation from Hurricane Matthew is far from over, and the potential for storm surges, flooding and property damage "continues to exist."

"I just want to emphasize to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane," Obama said during a statement from the Oval Office after meeting with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Craig Fugate, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and Deputy Homeland Security adviser Amy Pope.

The storm, which has been downgraded to Category Two, has caused flooding, wind damage and power failures in North Florida. Matthew, with winds of 105 miles per hour, is expected to move to North Carolina by night. The storm surges are likely to reach six to nine feet above high tide from Jacksonville, Florida, up through Charleston, South Carolina, reports said. Haiti has borne the brunt of the storm with nearly 30,000 homes destroyed and 150 lives lost in just one part of the country's southern peninsula.

In many areas, the sugar, banana and mango crops were flattened. Rescue efforts were hit by the massive destruction all around, with trees and buildings felled and floodwater marooning remote areas. The UN has warned that it could take days for the full impact of Matthew in Haiti to emerge. Haiti's Civil Protection Agency on Friday doubled the death toll from the hurricane from 400 to more than 800.

World Food Programme's Haiti Director Carlos Veloso said some of the hard-hit towns in Haiti can be accessed only by air or sea. Matthew battered Haiti's western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 miles per hour (233 km per hour) winds and torrential rain. More than 61,500 people are in shelters, officials said, Mobile phone networks are down and roads flooded, making it difficult for aid to reach hard-hit areas in Haiti.

The Mesa Verde, a US Navy amphibious transport dock ship, was headed for Haiti to support relief efforts. The ship has heavy-lift helicopters, bulldozers, fresh water delivery vehicles and two surgical operating rooms. At least one major town in the south - Jeremie - has been 80 per cent destroyed, with aerial footage showing the scale of destruction with hundreds of flattened houses.

The storm passed directly through the Tiburon peninsula - encompassing Haiti's entire southern coast - driving the sea inland and flattening homes with winds of up to 230km/h and torrential rain, BBC reported.

The Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal for $6.9m, "to provide medical, shelter, water and sanitation assistance to 50,000 people."

There have been concerns over a surge in cholera cases, with at least seven deaths reported. A 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed thousands of people. After slicing through Haiti and Cuba, Matthew pounded the Bahamas on Thursday but no fatalities were reported there.

Four people died in the neighbouring Dominican Republic on Tuesday. As it approached Florida, the storm swept past the coast with winds of up to 120 mph (195 kph) but did not make landfall in the state. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded the storm to Category 2 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale as its sustained winds dropped to 110 mph. Category 5 is the strongest.

Four storm-related deaths were reported in Florida but no immediate reports of significant damage in cities and towns where waves swept through streets, toppled trees and knocked out power to more than 1 million people, the Telegraph reported. More than two million people had been ordered to evacuate the area. US President Barack Obama on Friday warned that, while southern Florida had been spared the worst, the hurricane remained very dangerous, and the risk of a storm surge and flooding remained real. A state of emergency is in place in several states of US.

While the capital and biggest city, Port-au-Prince, was largely spared, the south suffered devastation. Aerial footage from the hardest-hit towns showed a ruined landscape of metal shanties with roofs blown away and downed trees everywhere. Brown mud from overflowing rivers covered the ground. Herve Fourcand, a senator for the Sud department, which felt the full force of Matthew's impact, said several localities were still cut off by flooding and mudslides. A scene of desolation greeted visitors to Jeremie, a town of 30,000 people left inaccessible until Friday. No power. No phone lines. People cut off without news of the capital for days since the storm struck Tuesday and who had yet to hear that a Presidential election due to take place this weekend has been postponed.

Virtually all the town's corrugated-iron homes have been destroyed, with only a few concrete buildings left standing. It was as if someone had a remote control and just kept turning the wind up higher and higher, said Carmine Luc, a 22-year-old woman. When the roof of my house blew off, I clung to a wall with my left hand, and with my right, I held on with all my strength to my three-year-old child, who was screaming, she said.

A ship carrying nine containers of food and medical supplies was headed for Dame Marie, further west in Grand'Anse department. "It's probably the hardest hit department and the conditions don't allow for a helicopter to land there," Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph said. "So we're doing our best to help those affected. Convoys were headed to other affected areas by land, sea and air," he said, including two helicopters provided by the US military to transport 50 tonnes of water, food and medicine elsewhere in Grand'Anse. Further south, Haiti's third-largest town of Les Cayes was battered, its Sous-Roches district turned from a quiet beachfront neighborhood to a chaos of mud and shattered trees.

Source: IANS/ AFP