At least 470 people have died in one district of Haiti's hard-hit southwest region as authorities slowly reach marooned areas devastated by Hurricane Matthew, a civil defense official said today.
Fridnel Kedler, coordinator for the Civil Protection Agency in Grand-Anse, told The Associated Press that officials still have not been able to reach two communities in that department three days after the Category 4 storm hit.
"The death toll is sure to go up," he said.
Officials are especially concerned about Grand-Anse, located on the northern tip of the southwest peninsula, where they believe the death toll and damage is highest. When Category 4 Hurricane Flora hit Haiti in 1963, it killed as many as 8,000 people.
Haiti's overall death toll remains unknown. Death counts are frequently difficult to tabulate in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster in any country, though it is particularly difficult in remote and mountainous southwest Haiti.
In Jeremie, the main city of Grand-Anse, Jislene Jean-Baptiste surveyed what remained of the one-room house that the grandmother shares with her three daughters and their children. There wasn't much left. Storm surge flowed across the road and drenched everything she owns in waist-deep salt water, washing away the stores of rice and sugar she regularly sold at the market to support her family. Then the wind tore off her roof.
"That storm was the most terrifying thing that ever happened here," she said.
Many of her neighbors are in a similarly dire situation because of the storm that has killed hundreds of people in Haiti. Its government has estimated at least 350,000 people need some kind of assistance in what is likely to be the country's worst humanitarian crisis since a devastating earthquake in January 2010.
Katrina Legner, a 23-year-old mother of two, also saw the storm destroy her small, concrete-block home before she fled to a cousin's house of a cousin that was also wrecked. "We have very little food and I'm getting worried," she said.
Amid the suffering, aid began pouring into the coastal town of Jeremie, where thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed and many people were running low on food and facing an increased risk for cholera. Dozens of young Haitians came to the small airstrip along the coast to watch as a helicopter was unloaded with crates of food and water.
"My home is totally wrecked and I heard they were bringing food," said Richard David, 22, one of those who came to the airport. "I haven't had anything but water today and I'm hungry.
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