The devastating effects of Hurricane Matthew has increased the number of people killed to at least 478 today as rescue workers and aid agencies battle to reach the remote areas of the country affected, in order to assess the damage and deliver relief.
According to reports from The Guardian UK, communications are still down in many of the worst-affected areas and it will take days before a definitive death toll can be established.
The Haitian government put the number of dead at 122, Radio Television Caraibes at 264, while Hervé Fourcand, a senator for the Sud department, said more than 300 people had died in the region, while local officials speaking to Reuters put the toll at 478.
However, by this morning, Matthew was battering Florida, becoming the first major hurricane threatening a direct hit on the United States in more than 10 years.
Efforts to access the worst-affected areas of Haiti – including the Grand’Anse and Sud departments – were at first hampered by flooding, the collapse of communications networks and the destruction of a key bridge.
As the weather cleared, Haitian authorities, the United Nations and national and international Non-Governmental Organisations were getting a better idea of the scale of the destruction.
The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has however reopened for humanitarian flights and communication is being restored to cut-off areas.
The storm passed directly through the peninsula, driving the sea inland and flattening homes on Monday and Tuesday.
Yvonne Helle, the United Nations Development Programme’s Haiti director, said that while the lack of access to affected areas made getting precise numbers impossible at this stage, the scale of the damage was clearly enormous.
Further adding that the UNDP had received reports that up to 98% of the city of Jérémie, in Grand’Anse department, had been destroyed.
The devastation in Haiti prompted authorities to postpone the presidential election that had been scheduled for Sunday.