Hurricane Matthew on route towards Southeast US coast, states declares emergency
Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Haiti and moved on to Cuba at a speed of 140 mile-per-hour (230 kph) on Tuesday forcing hundreds of thousands of people in the impact zone to take cover from the category four storm, the worst Caribbean has seen in almost a decade.
The first evacuation was ordered in the United States as people living in the coastal areas prepared to flee the fast approaching storm, which is expected to hit the East Coast later this week.
The governor of South Carolina declared emergency and has ordered evacuation of 1 million people on Wednesday afternoon and states of Georgia, Florida and parts of North Carolina have also declared a state of emergency.
The United Nations has confirmed the situation as the worst humanitarian crisis in Haiti since the devastating 2010 earth quake.
Reports say that, at least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic in accident related to walls collapsing and mudslides; another two were killed in Haiti. The communication system in the area is the worst affected with authorities still communications in the worst-hit areas are still down making it hard for authorities to assess the scale of the damage.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said that hurricane Matthew is likely to remain a major threat at least till Thursday night as it sweeps through the Bahamas towards Florida and the Atlantic coast of the southern United States.
Haitian interior minister Francois Anick Joseph said that United States has already offered the use of some helicopters and the damage to housing and crops in the country was apparently extensive.
According to Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, US Navy was considering sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region to aid relief efforts.
“The situation in Les Cayes (worst hit Haitian city) is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have trees lying in different places and you can barely move around, the wind has damaged many houses,” Les Cayes Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette Regis Delerme said.
President Obama postponed a trip to South Florida, where he had planned to attend a campaign event in support of Hillary Clinton.
“If #Matthew directly impacts FL there will be massive destruction that we haven’t seen in years,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said on Twitter.
Forecasters predict that the Category Four hurricane could hit the US East Coast around midweek.
Video of hurricane Matthew from International Space Station