/ 6 October 2016

Hurricane Matthew death toll rises to 102

There were no immediate reports of deaths
The Yabonga Children’s Project was one of the first nongovernmental organisations to be offered shares by Brimstone, and has now achieved sustainability.

Hurricane Matthew has killed at least 102 people, the death toll in struggling Haiti alone rising to 98, local officials said, as the storm headed northward on Thursday battering the Bahamas en route to Florida.

Haiti’s civil protection service said many were killed by falling trees, flying debris and swollen rivers. 

That included a group of 24 people killed in the coastal town of Roche-a-Bateau.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the town’s delegate Louis Paul Raphael.

Four people were killed earlier in neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Matthew is the strongest hurricane in the Caribbean since Felix in 2007. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it whipped Cuba and Haiti with 225kph winds and torrential rain, pummeling towns, crops and homes and killing livestock.

The devastation in Haiti prompted authorities to postpone a presidential election scheduled for Sunday. — Reuters