Hurricane Matthew roars towards US after hammering Haiti
Hurricane Matthew is heading for the southern Bahamas and America's east coast after slamming into Haiti with howling 145mph winds.
Trees were knocked down and roofs torn off in the poor and largely rural area, while neighbourhoods were inundated with floodwater and mud.
By nightfall, at least 11 deaths had been blamed on the powerful storm during its week-long march across the Caribbean. But with a key bridge washed out, impassable roads and phone communication cut off with Haiti's hardest-hit area, there was no way to know how many people might be dead or injured.
Matthew, slightly weakened but still a dangerous Category 4 storm with 130mph winds, whipped at Cuba's sparsely populated eastern tip on Tuesday night as it headed for a two-day run up the length of the Bahamas that would take it near the US coast.
Twenty-foot waves pounded the seafront promenade in the Cuban town of Baracoa and powerful winds rattled the walls of homes and heavy rain caused some flooding. But state media said there were no immediate reports of serious damage.
Hours after Matthew made landfall on Haiti's now-marooned south-western peninsula, government leaders said they could not fully gauge the impact.
"What we know is that many, many houses have been damaged. Some lost rooftops and they'll have to be replaced while others were totally destroyed," interior minister Francois Anick Joseph said.
At least five deaths were blamed on the storm in Haiti, including a 26-year-old man who drowned trying to rescue a child who fell into a rushing river, authorities said. The child was saved.
The mayor in flooded Petit Goave said two people died there, including a woman killed by a falling electricity pole.
Bahamas prime minister Perry Christie voiced concern about the potential impact on the sprawling archipelago off Florida's east coast. "We're worried because we do not control nature," he said.
There was growing concern on the US east coast, which was expected to come under threat after Matthew made a two-day surge up the length of the Bahamas. People raced to supermarkets, petrol stations and hardware stores, buying groceries, water, plywood, tarpaulinss, batteries and propane.
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said she would issue an evacuation order on Wednesday so one million people would have time to leave the coast. The Red Cross put out a call for volunteers there.
Florida governor Rick Scott urged coastal residents to prepare for the possibility of a direct hit and line up three days' worth of food, water and medicine. The White House said relief supplies were being moved to emergency staging areas in the Southeast.
In Haiti, where international aid efforts were hampered because of the lack of access to the hardest-hit areas, many residents waded through shin-high waters.
Part of roof coming down. Nothing major, it's not the exterior of roof but scary ! #HurricaneMatthew pic.twitter.com/kfMZaMEQPA
— Mike Theiss (@MikeTheiss) October 5, 2016
Muddy rivers and tributaries continued to rise as water flowed down hillsides and mountains, making more flash floods and mudslides possible even Matthew tracked away from the country.
Matthew was at one point a Category 5 storm, making it the most powerful hurricane in the region in nearly a decade. It blew ashore around dawn in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and a place where many people live in shacks of wood or concrete blocks.
Mourad Wahba, the United Nations secretary general's deputy special representative for Haiti, said at least 10,000 people were in shelters and hospitals were overflowing and running short of water.
He called the hurricane's destruction the "largest humanitarian event" in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of January 2010.
Matthew left the peninsula that runs along the southern coast of Haiti cut off from the rest of the country. A bridge in the flooded town of Petit Goave was destroyed, preventing any road travel to the hard-hit south west. Local radio said water was shoulder high in parts of the city of Les Cayes.
Milriste Nelson, a 65-year-old farmer in the town of Leogane, said his neighbours fled when the wind ripped the corrugated metal roof from their home. His own small garden was strewn with the fruit he depends on for his livelihood.
"All the banana trees, all the mangos, everything is gone," he said as he boiled breadfruit over a charcoal fire in the grey morning light. "This country is going to fall deeper into misery."
Haitian authorities tried to evacuate people from the most vulnerable areas ahead of the storm, but many were reluctant to leave their homes. Some sought shelter only after the worst was already upon them.
Before mobile communications went out in the south-western town of Jeremie, one resident described seeing panicked people who did not evacuate coastal homes and were frantically seeking shelter at dawn.
Matthew was expected to drop 15 to 25ins of rain, and up to 40ins in isolated places of Haiti, along with up to 10ft of storm surge and battering waves.
"They are getting everything a major hurricane can throw at them," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
Four deaths were recorded in the neighbouring Dominican Republic and one each in Colombia and in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Forecasters said Matthew could be threatening Florida by Thursday night and would probably push its way up the east coast through the weekend.
