Hurricane Matthew hitting Bahamas as Haiti tries to dig out
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Rescue workers in Haiti struggled to reach isolated towns on Haiti’s southern peninsula and learn the full extent of the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew as the powerful storm lashed at the Bahamas on Wednesday and triggered large-scale evacuations along the U.S. East Coast.
At least 16 deaths were blamed on the hurricane during its weeklong march across the Caribbean, 10 of them in Haiti. Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of Haiti’s civil protection agency, announced Wednesday that Haiti’s confirmed death toll had doubled from five to 10.
But with a key bridge washed out, roads impassable and phone communications down, the western tip of Haiti was largely cut off a day after Matthew made landfall and there was no full accounting of the dead and injured in its wake.
But Jean-Baptiste indicated her agency was starting to get a better handle about what happened in hard-hit Grande Anse department on Haiti’s southern peninsula and expected to soon release more information about what rescuers were finding.