Jamaica and Haiti continue to encourage residents in vulnerable areas to evacuate as the Caribbean begins to get hit by powerful Hurricane Matthew.
Haiti’s interior minister Francois Anick Joseph said officials are “very worried” by the situation, adding that 1,300 shelters had been set up to assist hundreds of thousands of people.
“We want everybody to know that it is real,” he said.
Still, almost 2,000 people refuse to leave their homes and the minister said the government is ready to use force if needed. Haiti has been evacuating residents from exposed sandy islands off the southern coast.
Matthew is the strongest hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean since Felix in 2007. With maximum sustained winds of 230 kilometers per hour and higher gusts, Matthew is expected to remain a powerful storm while creating chaos on parts of the Caribbean during the next few days.
Hundreds of people had to be airlifted out of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay as Matthew heads toward Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica.
The Navy says people staying at the base and military detention center on the eastern end of the island of Cuba are being told to take shelter, and a mandatory evacuation of non-essential personnel is under way. That includes 700 family members of military personnel.
Scores of prisoners are still held at the detention center and about 5,500 people live on the base.
The United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a statement saying officials are prepared to “assist government and communities in the region.” The agency has deployed two disaster response teams to Haiti and Jamaica.
“These disaster experts are actively monitoring the storm’s track in real time and communicating with officials in Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, and Belize to coordinate relief efforts, if requested,” the statement said.
Emergency relief supplies including shelter materials, blankets, hygiene kits, household items and water purification equipment are available for the communities affected by the storm.
In Kingston, Jamaica, residents have bought enough food for the upcoming days, but the country’s prime minister said some people will most likely ignore evacuation orders. Some streets have already flooded.
“Some persons will resist, so what we’re trying to do is get our citizens to comply in their own interest which would certainly save resources having to be deployed in a time of emergency when it will be difficult to respond,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said.
The storm is expected to pass through eastern Cuba and the Bahamas Tuesday into Wednesday.
The Cuban government has declared a state of emergency in the five eastern provinces.
Meteorologists have said it is possible the hurricane will eventually track along or near the U.S. East Coast, brushing Florida, but it is still too early to tell.
Florida was hit in September by Hurricane Hermine, which made landfall on the state’s Panhandle as a relatively weak category 1 hurricane.
Weather forecasters predict rainfall of 25 to 38 centimeters with isolated amounts of more than 63 centimeters across Jamaica and southwestern Haiti. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said these rains may produce “life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.”
The storm has already claimed its first victim. The governor of Colombia’s La Guajira department said a 67-year-old indigenous man was killed by tropical storm winds in the rural part of the country.
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