Hurricane Matthew has descended on the South-Eastern border of the United States on Saturday, flooding the coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas with a powerful storm surge, and resulting in at least four deaths.
According to Reports by The Guardian UK, more than 1 million customers in Florida were still without power on Saturday, and Governor Nikki Haley said another 437,000 people had lost electricity in South Carolina.
On Friday, Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration for Georgia, freeing up federal resources for recovery efforts similar to those already under way in Florida.
“We don’t know how bad the damage could end up; we don’t know how severe the storm surge could end up being,” he said.
“And we’re not going to know for three, four or five days what the ultimate effects of this are.”
He said he was keeping in constant contact with the governors of the four states still operating under states of emergency: Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Florida was largely spared the kind of major damage that Matthew dealt in the Caribbean, as the then category 4 storm, with wind gusts of 165mph, ran parallel to its coastline.
NHC meteorologists said the storm’s center remained further out to sea than was originally forecast, keeping the most powerful winds away from heavily populated areas.
In Haiti, the death toll rose above 900 on Saturday. Aid agencies, including the Red Cross and Oxfam, have launched urgent appeals, and the White House announced that it would increase its disaster relief team to more than 200 by Sunday.
“I would ask all Americans to go to the American Red Cross and other philanthropic agencies to make sure that we’re doing what we need to do to help people in need,” Obama said.