PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The death toll from Hurricane Matthew rose past 100 in Haiti, officials said Thursday, as the scope of the devastation became clearer with reconnaissance flights revealing flattened villages and aid groups warning of a massive humanitarian crisis unfolding.
With phone lines down and many bridges wiped out, rescue teams and others have just begun to cobble together reports from some isolated regions two days after Matthew roared over the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation with winds reaching 145 mph.
Haiti’s interior minister, Francois Anick Joseph, said at least 108 deaths were blamed on the storm as it started a punishing path through the Caribbean with expected landfall in Florida later Thursday. In addition, at least four deaths were reported in the neighboring Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile, other alarming signs were emerging: At least three cases of cholera reported in Jeremie on the southwest tip of Haiti, said Holly Frew, a spokeswoman for the aid group CARE, speaking by phone from the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.
Cholera, a potentially deadly disease spread by contaminated water, is a main concern for relief agencies struggling over how to bring clean water and emergency sanitation systems to areas now accessible only by air.
“The risks are high of cholera spreading rapidly, given the flooding and lack of power,” said Frew. “We are very worried.”
Aerial images provided by the U.S. Coast Guard showed scenes of near-total damage in some areas: wooden homes left as just scattered timbers, roofs sheared off and palm groves leveled by the Category 4 storm. In some areas of Haiti, people still live in makeshift structures since a major earthquake six years ago that killed 200,000 people.
“We do know there’s a lot of damage in the Grand Anse, and we also know human life has been lost there,” said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, the head of Haiti’s civil protection agency.
About 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed in Jeremie, said Frew, the CARE spokeswoman.
Matthew slammed eastern Cuba before churning Thursday over the Bahamas, where residents were urged to move to high ground and the capital, Nassau, was battened down for the strongest hurricane in the Caribbean since Felix struck in 2007.
Matthew is expected to veer west and hit the Florida shores later Thursday – picking up some strength over open seas – before spinning up the coastline to South Carolina.
The governors of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina declared states of emergency, and more than 2 million people from Florida and South Carolina were under evacuation orders.
At midday Thursday, Matthew’s eye was about 25 miles west-northwest of Nassau – or about 180 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, Fla. – with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was moving northwest at 14 mph.
In Haiti’s coastal city of Les Cayes, the streets have turned into canals that residents are forced to wade through.
“We’ve lost everything we own. But it would have been our fault if we stayed here and died,” Cenita Leconte, who lives near Les Cayes, told the Associated Press. The 75-year-old evacuated at the last minute after initially ignoring official calls to leave, like many residents.
Across the hurricane-hit region, many Haitians sought shelter in schools where votes were meant to be cast on Sunday. Haiti’s electoral council on Wednesday postponed a presidential election that has already been delayed several times. Authorities said the situation would be evaluated over the next week before a new date was announced.
Samuel Darguin, a worker with the aid group Haitian American Caucus-Haiti, said relief convoys were prevented from reaching many areas because bridges had been swept away by floodwaters.
Local teams in the isolated regions were in “search-and-rescue mode,” he said, with reports of people missing. That suggested the death toll could rise.
The U.S. Navy has sent three ships to Haiti, including an aircraft carrier and a hospital ship. About 300 Marines were aboard the USS Mesa Verde, an amphibious transport vessel.
Haiti’s embassy in Washington described the next few days as “critical to the recovery process” and urged governments, organizations and private individuals to coordinate their aid efforts to avoid overlap and waste.
“It is expected that many will want to engage and take initiatives toward recovery and relief efforts,” Wednesday’s statement said. “The state of Haiti strongly encourages all individuals who are in the process of organizing specific responses and action plans, to work with the local organizations and institutions in Haiti.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Joshua Partlow, Paul Schemm, Brian Murphy
