At least eight people are feared dead after Hurricane Matthew – the most powerful storm in the Caribbean in almost 10 years – tore through Caribbean nations including Haiti.
The Category Four storm, which reportedly had winds of 230 kph, made landfall in eastern Cuba Tuesday night after earlier passing through Haiti and neighbouring Dominican Republic. Parts of the US, including Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, have already declared a state of emergency with the storm expected to make landfall there as early as Thursday.
In Haiti – which the UN said was facing its biggest humanitarian crisis since a 2010 earthquake which left as many as 200,000 people dead and displaced almost 1.5 million people – tens of thousands of people are still living in shelters and food security remains an issue.
John Hasse, national director of World Vision – which has already begun distributing aid in Haiti, said that the need would be great in Haiti.
“We’re seeing enormous amounts of flooding, enormous amounts of wind damage,” he said. “Yet right up until the storm hit, we still heard many people saying, ‘We’re waiting on God’ and not making preparations.”
Mr Hasse said that as well as the threat of a cholera break-out and the risks to children in the aftermath of the storm, World Vision also saw the risk to agriculture as a major concern.
“World Vision had been making good progress in areas like the nutrition of children following the drought last year. It looked like it would be a great year for crops, and now we’re scared that we’re going to see decline again because of the storm,” he said.
Those killed in the storm have included two men in Haiti and four people in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
