Death toll in Haiti from Hurricane Matthew rises above 800

CHANTAL, Haiti/COCOA BEACH, Fla. — Hurricane Matthew killed more than 800 people and left tens of thousands homeless in its rampage through Haiti earlier this week before it lashed Florida on Friday with rain and howling winds and rolled northward up the U.S. Atlantic coast.

The number of fatalities 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.

The United States has sent teams of military and U.S. Agency for International Development personnel to help Haiti, the White House said on Friday.

USAID has sent teams to Haiti, Jamaica and the Bahamas to work with local authorities to coordinate disaster relief, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The Defense Department has about 150 people in Haiti now, and “weather permitting” that number will grow to a couple of hundred over the weekend, Schultz said.

The teams are distributing food and water, helping with transportation, and setting up first responder capabilities, he said.

The U.S. military said on Friday the USS Mesa Verde, an amphibious transport dock ship, is heading toward Haiti to support relief efforts and will start helicopter flights to support USAID efforts on the island.

The ship can produce fresh water and has water delivery vehicles aboard.

Matthew, the first major hurricane that could hit the United States head on in more than a decade, triggered mass evacuations along the coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.

Southern Florida escaped the brunt of the storm overnight, but President Barack Obama and other officials urged people not to get complacent in the face of a storm that could be the most severe to strike northeast Florida in more than 100 years.

“I just want to emphasize to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane, that the potential for storm surge, loss of life and severe property damage exists,” Obama told reporters after a briefing with emergency management officials. “People continue to need to follow the instructions of their local officials over the next 24, 48, 72 hours.”

Matthew had smashed through the tip of Haiti’s western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mph (233 kph) 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.

At least 175 people died in villages clustered among the hills and coast of Haiti’s fertile western tip. At least three towns reported dozens of fatalities, including the farming village of Chantal, where the mayor said 86 people perished, 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.”

Cellphone networks were down and roads were flooded by sea and river water in Haiti.

When Category 4 Hurricane Flora hit Haiti in 1963, it killed as many as 8,000 people.