At least 264 people in Haiti have been killed by Hurricane Matthew, as officials in the country warned that the death toll will likely rise.
Powerful Matthew shredded homes, flooded entire villages and engulfed communities in knee-deep water after making landfall in Haiti as a Category 4 hurricane on Tuesday.
It ripped through the southwestern peninsula of the country. Three days after the hurricane hit, the full extent of damage in Haiti is not yet known, as rescue efforts have been hampered by downed communication systems and flooded roads as they struggle to reach the hardest-hit areas.
The current death toll does not take into account potential loss of life in the far southwest of the country, which have yet to be assessed due to “communication issues,” said Civil Protection Service spokesman Joseph Edgard Celestin.
Hurricane Matthew’s ferocious impact left 350,000 people in need of assistance and forced about 15,000 residents into in shelters, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
UNICEF had warned on Wednesday that Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the 2010 earthquake, which killed at least 220,000, injured 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million people.
“What we are realizing, as we are going further … is that there’s been a lot of devastation and a lot of damage and probably a lot more than what we had initially assessed,” said Ariane Quentier, spokeswoman for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
Haitian officials postponed the presidential elections, which had been scheduled for Sunday due to the hurricane.
Toll of Hurricane Matthew still unclear
The storm tore apart roads including a critical bridge that connects the capital Port-au-Prince with the southern peninsula.
The bridge, which spans the Rivière la Digue in Petit-Goâve, southwest of the capital, collapsed on Tuesday, but became partially passable as waters subsided Thursday.
“The most concerning thing is we really don’t have a full picture. We don’t have all the information we need in order to see how bad it is,” said Christy Delafield, a communications officer with Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian aid agency.
“This is due to a bridge being out. There have been landslides and the cell phone service has been unreliable. We need to get to the south of the country.”
Port-au-Prince has not suffered such bad damage as the south, although some neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city have been flooded, she said.
“Very heavy damage” is expected in the southern departments of Grand-Anse and Sud, which are like provinces, and the cities of Les Cayes, Jérémie and Port Salut, according to OCHA.
“However, the assessment phase has only just begun due to severe weather conditions and lack of ground access,” it stated in a Thursday situation report.
Kevin Novotny, country director for Save the Children in Haiti, said staff based in Les Cayes observed that “a lot of houses are destroyed there. Anything with a tin roof lost it.”
Top concerns in Haiti
Videos showed residents wading through muddy waters and farm fields choked with flood waters as crops floated lifelessly.
The impact of the hurricane immediately raised public health concerns, especially about the availability of clean water, food and shelter.
“The urgent need we’re focusing on right now is food, safe drinking water and … things like plastic sheeting, hygiene kits and so forth,” said Tim Callaghan, assistance response team leader for the US Agency for International Development in Haiti.
Dave Brodsky, president of Chanje Movement, a California-based church partnership that has been working in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, said he observed homes leveled with mud among other problems.
“There are sanitation issues because the standing water is mixing with human waste and animal waste,” he said speaking to CNN from Croix-des-Bouquets, a major suburb to the north east of the capital.
The “poorest of the poor” have been worst hit by flooding, he said.
Partners in Health, which has worked in Haiti for nearly three decades, warned that the hurricane would likely worsen the country’s cholera epidemic.
Its chief medical officer in Haiti, Dr. Charles-Patrick Almazor told ABC News: “Though the storm has passed, experience tells us that the worst is yet to come. What would be the immediate need is to make sure that people get safe drinking water and safe water for washing.”
Cholera is an acute gastrointestinal illness caused by ingesting food or drink contaminated with Vibrio cholera bacteria. It can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting, which leads to extreme dehydration.
A cholera outbreak following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed at least 10,000 people. Earlier this year, the UN acknowledged its own involvement in the devastating epidemic.
The Pan American Health Organization sent epidemiologists with cholera experience this week to Haiti.