Hurricane Matthew pounds Caribbean
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The outer bands of powerful Hurricane Matthew drenched Haiti on Monday, flooding streets and sending people scrambling to emergency shelters as the Category 4 storm threatened to hit the hemisphere’s poorest nation overnight with lifethreatening winds, rains and storm surge.
Matthew had sustained winds of 140 mph Monday evening, up from 130 mph earlier in the day. Its center was expected to pass near or over the southwestern tip of impoverished Haiti on Tuesday morning before heading to eastern Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
“We are looking at a dangerous hurricane that is heading into western Haiti and eastern Cuba,” said Richard Pasch, a senior hurricane specialist with the center. “People who are impacted by flooding and mudslides hopefully would get out because that’s where we have seen loss of life in the past.”
In the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, officials urged shantytown residents living next to a muddy river to take shelter at a local school where cots were set up. While some went, many refused fearing their few possessions might be stolen.
“If we lose our things we are not going to get them back!” Toussaint Laine said as police and officials from the mayor’s office urged the jobless man and his family to evacuate.
Haiti’s civil protection agency reported the death of a fisherman in rough water churned up by the storm. Another fisherman is missing.
The confirmed death in Haiti brought the total for the storm to at least three. One man died Friday in Colombia and a 16-yearold was killed in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Sept. 28 when the system passed through the eastern Caribbean.
Authorities went door to door in Haiti’s south coast cities to make sure people were aware of the storm. At least 1,200 people were moved to shelters in churches and schools.
There is no shortage of people with flimsy houses in Haiti. In an unregulated sprawl of shacks on hillsides near the northern edge of Haiti’s capital, some poor families did what they could to reinforce their tin-and-tarp houses. But most were just praying they would get through the storm without getting hurt.