Haiti began three days of national mourning on Sunday after more than 800 people died when Hurricane Matthew – the fiercest storm to hit the country in more than a decade – swept across the Caribbean nation last week.
The hurricane, which also killed four people in the Dominican Republic, went on to make landfall on the US Atlantic coast late last week, where at least 16 people were killed, before making its way out to sea and being stripped of its hurricane designation. Some two million people in the US evacuated their homes before the hurricane hit but experts said, while the destruction was considerable, the fact the hurricane had stuck to the coast had prevented the damage being considerably worse than it was.
In Haiti, where the exact death toll still remains unknown, international aid has begun reaching stricken communities. It is believed at least 800 people have been killed and tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed. Some 350,000 people reportedly need humanitarian aid in the wake of the Category Four storm which had wind speeds of up to 235 kph.
There are fears that a cholera outbreak, which has already killed thousands, could worsen in the wake of the hurricane, the worst natural disaster to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake which left 200,000 dead.
“We expect that homes, schools and cholera treatment facilities have been destroyed and that water systems, roads and bridges have been severely damaged,” UN emergency relief coordinator Stephen O’Brien said last week. “This is a major blow to Haiti’s reconstruction effort and the fight against cholera…”
