Horror in Haiti as death toll soars past 800
JEREMIE: The full scale of the devastation in hurricane hit rural Haiti became clear as the death toll surged past 800, three days after Hurricane Matthew levelled huge swaths of the country’s south.
As Matthew threatened the US coast, President Barack Obama urged Americans to mobilise in support of Haiti, where a million people were in need of assistance after the latest disaster to strike the western hemisphere’s poorest nation.
While the capital and biggest city, Portau-Prince, was largely spared, the south suffered devastation.
Aerial footage from the hardesthit towns showed a ruined landscape of metal shanties with roofs blown away and downed trees everywhere.
Brown mud from overflowing rivers covered the ground.
Herve Fourcand, a senator for the Sud department, which felt the full force of Matthew’s impact, said that several localities were still cut off by flooding and mudslides.
A scene of desolation greeted visitors to Jeremie, a town of 30,000 people, that was left inaccessible until Friday.
No power. No phone lines. People cut off without news of the capital for days since the storm struck on Tuesday – and who had yet to hear that a presidential election due to take place this weekend has been postponed.
Virtually all the town’s corrugated iron homes have been destroyed, with only a few concrete buildings left standing.
“It was as if someone had a remote control and just kept turning the wind up higher and higher,” said Carmine Luc, a 22yearold woman.
“When the roof of my house blew off, I clung to a wall with my left hand, and with my right, I held on with all my strength to my threeyearold child – who was screaming,” she said.
A ship carrying nine containers of food and medical supplies was headed for Dame Marie, further west in Grand’ Anse department.
“It’s probably the hardest hit department and the conditions don’t allow for a helicopter to land there,” Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph said. “So we’re doing our best to help those affected.”
Convoys were headed to other affected areas by land, sea and air, he said, including two helicopters provided by the US military to transport 50 tonnes of water, food and medicine elsewhere in Grand’Anse.
Further south, Haiti’s third largest town of Les Cayes was battered, its SousRoches district turned from a quiet beachfront neighbourhood to a chaos of mud and shattered trees. — AFP