Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 storm, is the first major hurricane to hit Haiti since Hurricane Inez in 1966, according to USA Today. A major hurricane is one that is a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm.
One man has died this morning as the storm crashed into his home in Port Salut, according to the country’s civil protection service. He had been too sick to leave for a shelter. Over the weekend, one fisherman was killed in the heavy seas and another is missing, as the storm approached.
As the storm approached overnight, people in coastal towns and villages fled as a number of towns on the coast were inundated with ocean water that ran like a river through the streets, into people’s houses and covered fields of crops with salt water and rain.
About three feet of rain is forecast to fall on the deforested hills of the island nation today, raising fears of flash floods and mud slides, threatening villages and shanty towns around Port-Au-Prince. More than 9,000 people are jammed into shelters.
“We’re expecting a lot of houses to go down because of the poor housing infrastructure in a lot of the rural areas where we work,” said John Hasse, an aid worker in Haiti with the humanitarian organization World Vision. “With winds this strong, it will be extremely damaging and dangerous and homes for the average person are made of mud and sticks or poorly constructed cinderblocks.”
So very many people waited until the very last minute before realizing just how truly dangerous Matthew was before fleeing ahead of the storm surge, said Tiburon Mayor Remiza Denize, according to Reuters. “Everyone is trying to find a safe place to protect themselves, the situation is very difficult,” he said.
