Scared Kiwi students huddle in hurricane

A Kiwi woman caught in a ferocious hurricane which struck the Florida coast last night described howling winds and lashing rain, saying “everybody’s scared”.

The most powerful storm to threaten the US Atlantic coast in more than a decade has steamed toward heavily populated Florida with terrifying winds of 225km/ h, as two million people across the southeast were warned to flee inland.

Hurricane Matthew has already battered Haiti and Cuba in the past few days, claiming 283 lives so far. Florida authorities are ordering body bags and preparing for mass casualties.

Tanvi Kaushal is staying at Walt Disney World in Orlando with 10 students from the New Zealand School of Tourism.

She said the weather was racing over them in extreme bursts of wind and rain before ebbing to “eerily calm”.

“It’s howling . . . There’s rain, water and wind. It’s just ridiculous.”

Kaushal, 22, was last night in a room with 16 other people from all over the world including the 10 Kiwi students.

They had hunkered into sleeping bags and were staying up all night to keep an eye on the storm.

“A lot of people are scared, everybody’s scared. But we’re all sticking together.

“We’ve all got family back home and we want them to know we’re safe and in one piece.”

It wasn’t until she got 15 emails from her Disney housing complex saying the accommodation was going into lockdown that Kaushal started to take the hurricane seriously.

“A lot of the Florida people weren’t worried until they were told it was a category 4. They’re worried now.”

Kiwi Melanie Peapell, in Aventura in the northeast of Miami Dade County, told the Herald: “The rain is horizontal. My apartment’s windows and glass doors are made of hurricane- proof glass so I was comforted a bit by that.”

Peapell, who has lived in the area for 10 years, said schools had shut early and she was off work.