The death toll from Hurricane Matthew has spiked over the weekend to more than 870 victims, as the storm travels north into South Carolina, where 300,000 people evacuated ahead of the storm. Matthew had weakened to a Category 1 hurricane with “only” 75 mile per hour (137 kilometer per hour) winds as of Saturday afternoon.
But the hurricane bashed the island nation of Haiti last week. Immediately the day after, IsraAID and local partner Prodev rushed to help the stunned survivors. Responders from the two organizations were the first to provide food and water for 200 children at Cite Soleil, a densely populated and extremely impoverished community in Port-Au-Prince.
Most of the storm’s victims were killed in Haiti, where the storm had packed its hardest punch with winds of more than 233 kilometers per hour (140 mph).
The United Nations has reported that 350,000 Haitians need assistance and 80 percent of the homes in the island nation are damaged.
Property damage firm CoreLogic estimated that the total cost of storm surge and wind damage from the hurricane could cost between $4 and $6 billion on 1.5 million residential and insured residential and commercial properties in the southeastern United States, including Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Not included in the estimate was damage to business owners from loss of hours, power outages, additional flooding and other issues.