Hurricane Matthew has taken its toll on Haiti, killing nearly 900 people and destroying some parts of the southern peninsula.
It has left tens of thousands of Haitians in need of emergency assistance.
Jean-Michel Vigreux, Haiti country director for aid organisation CARE described the scene in Jeremie, the capital of Grand Anse, as “complete destruction”.
“The southern part of Haiti has been particularly heavy hit by Hurricane Matthew and is now cut off from the rest of the country,” said Mr Vigreux.
“About 80 per cent of the buildings are destroyed. Phones and electricity are down. The bank is offline. Access is completely cut off and people are running out of food and money.”
The organisation said it is providing food and clean water to more than 3,700 people in Port-au-Prince evacuation shelters and in Grande Anse Deparments, which copped the brunt of the storm.
“Everyone is very shaken up. There’s already been three cases of cholera in the hospital but there is no electricity. There were five planned shelters and now there are 25 makeshift shelters that have popped up in the past 48 hours.”
Jacmel, on the southern coast and Haiti’s fourth largest city, has also been badly affected with 4,000 using shelters.
The Red Cross hopes to raise $9 million to help Haitians battered by Hurricane Matthew. Source: AP
Information trickled in from remote areas that were cut off by the storm, and it became clear that at least 175 people died in villages clustered among the hills and coast of Haiti's fertile western tip.
Matthew pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which are only now being contacted.
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At least three towns reported dozens of fatalities, including the hilly farming village of Chantal, whose mayor said 86 people perished, mostly when trees crushed houses. He said 20 more people were missing.
"A tree fell on the house and flattened it, the entire house fell on us. I couldn't get out," said driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald, 27, who had been married for a year.
"People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife who had died in the same spot," Jean-Donald said, his young daughter by his side, crying "Mommy."
Dozens more were missing, many of them in the Grand'Anse region on the northern side of the peninsula.
Coastal town Les Anglais also lost "several dozen" people, the central government representative in the region, Louis-Paul Raphael, told Reuters.
With fatalities mounting, various government agencies and committees differed on total deaths. A Reuters count of deaths reported by civil protection and local officials put the toll at 842.
Haiti's central civil protection agency, which takes longer to collate numbers because it needs to visually confirm victims itself, said 271 people died as Matthew smashed through the western peninsula on Tuesday.
A boat washed ashore after the passage of Hurricane Matthew in Playa Gelee, Haiti, 07 October 2016. Source: EFE
Some 61,500 people were in shelters, the agency said.
Les Anglais was the first place in Haiti that Matthew reached, as a powerful Category 4 storm before it moved north, lost strength and lashed central Florida on Friday.
Hours before the hurricane landed in Haiti, the Les Anglais mayor told Reuters residents were fleeing for their lives as the ocean rushed into their homes.
Source: AAP
