Hurricane Matthew kills over 800 in Haiti before hitting US

Hurricane Matthew killed more than 800 people and left tens of thousands homeless in Haiti earlier this week before it skirted Florida's Atlantic coast on Friday and plowed northward over waters just off Georgia.

The number of deaths in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, surged to at least 842 on Friday as information trickled in from remote areas previously cut off by the storm, according to a Reuters tally of death tolls given by officials.

Matthew triggered mass evacuations along the US coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.

US President Barack Obama urged people not to be complacent and to heed safety instructions. "The potential for storm surge, loss of life and severe property damage exists," Obama told reporters, after a briefing with emergency management officials about the fiercest cyclone to affect the United States since Superstorm Sandy four years ago.

Matthew smashed through Haiti's western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (233 km-per-hour) winds and torrential rain. Some 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said, after the storm pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which were only now being contacted.

While highlighting the misery of underdevelopment in Haiti, which is still recovering from a devastating 2010 earthquake, the storm looked certain to rekindle the debate about global warming and the long-term threat posed to low-lying cities and towns by rising sea levels.

At least three towns in the hills and coast of Haiti's fertile western tip reported dozens of people killed, including the farming village of Chantal where the mayor said 86 people died, mostly when trees crushed houses. He said 20 others were missing. "A tree fell on the house and flattened it. The entire house fell on us. I couldn't get out," said driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald, 27, who had been married for only a year. "People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife who had died in the same spot," Jean-Donald said, his young daughter by his side, crying "Mommy." With cellphone networks down and roads flooded, aid has been slow to reach hard-hit areas in Haiti. Food was scarce, and at least seven people died of cholera, likely because of flood water mixing with sewage.

The Mesa Verde, a US Navy amphibious transport dock ship, was heading for Haiti to support relief efforts. The ship has heavy-lift helicopters, bulldozers, fresh water delivery vehicles and two surgical operating rooms.

AT LEAST 4 DEAD IN FLORIDA

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The United States marked its first four fatalities from Hurricane Matthew as the powerful storm lashed the Florida coast, officials said Friday.

A 58-year-old woman suffered cardiac arrest in her home in central Florida's St Lucie County overnight, but high winds from Matthew - then a major Category Three storm on a five-point scale - prevented fire officials from reaching her, a fire spokeswoman told AFP.

"We were unable to respond safely, and unfortunately she died," said St Lucie County Fire District spokeswoman Catherine Chaney.

In the early morning hours, rescuers also received a call about an 82-year-old man who was experiencing stroke-like symptoms and was having difficulty breathing.

"Again, we could not go because that's when the winds were high," Chaney said.

The man was taken in a personal vehicle to a nearby hospital, and fire officials learned later that he died, she said.

At midday Friday, a woman in Volusia County ventured outside to feed some animals during a lull in the storm and was killed by a falling tree, said county manager Jim Dinneen.

Further north up the coast, in Putnam County, another woman trying to "ride out the storm" was killed by a tree after it fell on the trailer, the local sheriff's office said. A man that was also in the trailer was able to escape with only minor injuries.

The powerful storm surged through the Caribbean earlier this week, at times as a powerful Category 5 hurricane, leaving a trail of destruction in Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In addition to the scores killed in Haiti, four died in the Dominican Republic.

Matthew was downgraded to a Category 2 storm on Friday evening as it pummeled the northeastern Florida coast with winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) per hour. It was moving northward at 12 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said.

RELUCTANT TO LEAVE

Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was concerned that relatively light damage so far could give people up the coast a false sense of security. "People should not be looking at the damages they're seeing and saying this storm is not that bad," Fugate told NBC. "The real danger still is storm surge, particularly in northern Florida and southern Georgia. These are very vulnerable areas. They've never seen this kind of damage potential since the late 1800s," Fugate said.

In St. Augustine just south of Jacksonville, Florida, about half of the 14,000 residents refused to heed evacuation orders despite warnings of an 8-foot (2.4-meter) storm surge that could sink entire neighborhoods, Mayor Nancy Shaver said in a telephone interview from the area's emergency operations centre.

Television images later showed water surging through streets in the historic downtown area of St. Augustine, the oldest US city and a major tourist attraction. "There's that whole inability to suspend disbelief that I think really affects people in a time like this," Shaver said.