Death toll rises to 900 in Haiti as scale of devastation emerges
THE mother and her six-year-old daughter had fled to seek shelter at a church as the hurricane battered their flimsy wooden home. They never made it. “The wind took them,” the town mayor of the small town of Cavaillon said.
The scale of the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti climbed yesterday with the number of victims reaching nearly 900.
Authorities have warned the death toll caused by the most powerful Caribbean storm in a decade was still unknown four days after the hurricane hit, as some of the hardest-affected areas have yet to be reached.
Aid officials said up to 90 per cent of some areas of the country – which is one of the poorest in the world – have been destroyed.
Survivors also told of the devastation in the wake of the storm, which directly hit the southern coast of Haiti with winds of up to 145mph and torrential rain. Four people in neighbouring Dominican Republic also died.
Drew Garrison, a Haiti-based missionary who flew in on Friday, said several fishing villages were submerged and he could see bodies floating in the water. “Anything that wasn’t concrete was flattened,” he said. “There were several little fishing villages that just looked desolate, no life.”
Dozens of young Haitians came to the small airstrip along the coast to watch as a helicopter unloaded crates of food and water.
“My home is totally wrecked and I heard they were bringing food,” said Richard David, 22, one of those who came to the airport. “I’ve only had water today and I’m hungry.”
Homes have been reduced to piles of rubble, with roofs stripped away, fruit gone from the trees. The southern peninsula of Haiti was left effectively cut off after a bridge linking it to the capital, Port-au-Prince, collapsed.
Aid has begun pouring into the coastal town of Jeremie, the capital of the Grand-Anse region, where thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed and many people were running low on food and facing an increased risk of cholera.
“Devastation is everywhere,” said Pilus Enor, mayor of Camp Perrin, a town near the port city of Les Cayes on the peninsula’s south shore. “Every house has lost its roof.”
Officials were especially concerned about the Grand-Anse region on the northern tip of the peninsula, where they believe the death toll and damage is highest.
When category four Hurricane Flora hit Haiti in 1963 – the same strength as Hurricane Matthew – it killed as many as 8,000 people. The maximum is category five.
More bodies began to appear as flood waters receded. Officials said that food and water are urgently needed, saying crops had been levelled, wells inundated by seawater and some water treatment facilities destroyed.
Saint-Victor Jeune, an official with the civil protection agency working in Beaumont, in the mountains on the outskirts of Jeremie, said 82 bodies found by his team had not been recorded by authorities because of patchy communications.
Most appeared to have died from falling debris from the winds. “We don’t have any contact with Port-auPrince yet and there are places we still haven’t reached,” Jeune said, as he and a team of agents in orange vests combed the area.
The Pan American Health Organisation and others have warned of a surge in cholera cases because of the widespread flooding caused by Matthew.
The country has already been battling a huge cholera outbreak, which has killed around 10,000 people and affected more than 800,000 since 2010. The outbreak is believed to have started after a UN base set up to help in the wake of a devastating earthquake in 2010 contaminated the country’s biggest river.
Sophia Cheresal, deputy medical co-ordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, said there were at least 18 new cases of cholera at the Jeremie hospital. “It’s getting worse and probably some people are going to die,” she said.
Oxfam is distributing aid in the worst-hit towns, including hygiene kits and water purification tablets.
The capital Port-au-Prince was not as badly affected as the southern region but resident Marcele Duby told Oxfam: “The water in the house was up to my waist. I was afraid because if the water had risen a little more we couldn’t have done anything.”
Many of the 60,000 Haitians who are still living in tents in the capital after the 2010 earthquake have lost their few remaining belongings in the storm.
UN emergency relief co-ordinator Stephen O’Brien called the hurricane’s damage a major blow to Haiti’s reconstruction effort and the fight against cholera.
“We expect that homes, schools and cholera treatment facilities have been destroyed and that water systems, roads and bridges have been severely damaged,” he said.
This hurricane damage is a major blow to Haiti’s reconstruction effort and the fight against cholera