1 dead as Hurricane Matthew crosses Caribbean

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep.

One person has been killed in Haiti and another missing as Hurricane Matthew continues to move through the Caribbean, local media said Monday.

One body was found after a small boat with three fishermen sank off Saint-Jean-du-Sud community, the director of Haiti's Civil Protection Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste said. The missing person was on another Sunday in a nearby location.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the center of the Category 4 storm will hit southwest Haiti on Monday night with maximum winds of 220 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour). It will pass over eastern Cuba and the Bahamas on Tuesday and, possibly the eastern coast of Florida on Thursday.

The slow moving storm is advancing at 13 kph (8 mph) and is 325 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

As a preventive measure, authorities in Haiti have placed 1,247 people in 52 temporary shelters across the country, the interior ministry said, and is trying to persuade others at risk to move to safer areas.

“The government encourages people to move, to go to the homes of friends or relatives in safer zones ... so we are prepared to accommodate about 340,000 people in temporary shelters,” the ministry said, according to the Free Haiti newspaper.

In Cuba, the civil defense evacuated 316,000 people in the eastern part of the country Monday afternoon after the government activated the hurricane alert system.

Residents have stocked food, candles, water and other items.

Authorities in the Bahamas closed schools in the central and southern Atlantic archipelago and canceled flights of its flag carrier, Bahamasair, toward the southern islands.

Similar measures were taken in the Dominican Republic where 13,000 residents were relocated to relatives’ homes while 476 people were taken to shelters, the Emergency Operations Center (COE) reported.

At least 11 homes have been affected by rain and 15 of 32 total provinces remain on red alert, the COE added.

Heavy rain and wind were also felt in Jamaica.