(CNN) — Hurricane Matthew pounded western Haiti Tuesday morning, packing powerful winds and heavy rain as it crossed the country.
“The river has overflowed all around us,” church pastor Louis St. Germain said. “It’s terrible… a total disaster.”
St. Germain, who spoke to CNN on the phone from Les Cayes, Haiti, said the storm sheared a wall off of his house and tore roofs off many buildings in the area.
The “extremely dangerous” storm has already killed at least three people, caused cruise ships to change course and prompted officials to declare states of emergency.
And authorities have warned that the death toll could climb.
“We’ve already seen deaths. People who were out at sea. There are people who are missing. They are people who didn’t respect the alerts. They’ve lost their lives,” Interim Haitian President Jocelerme Privert said at a news conference.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall near Les Anglais, Haiti, around 7 a.m. ET, according to the National Hurricane Center. By 11 a.m., it had crossed the country and was back at sea, churning north through the Gulf of Gonave toward Cuba.
Forecasters say the storm, which is moving at about 10 mph, is expected to impact eastern Cuba later Tuesday.
A threat remains in Haiti even though the eye of the storm has passed. Ferocious rain and wind were already thrashing the Caribbean nation before the storm made landfall. And forecasters said Tuesday that life-threatening flash floods and mudslides were likely.
Up to 40 inches of rain could be dumped on the impoverished nation, which is still recovering from a devastating earthquake that struck six years ago and a cholera outbreak after that.
River levels rise
Les Cayes Mayor Jean Gabriel Fortuné said Tuesday morning that the storm was slamming into his city. He posted videos on social media that showed wind whipping through trees as heavy rains pelted people on the streets.
The United Nations mission in Haiti shared a photo of people wading through water in a flooded street there.
Eyewitnesses also reported streets flooding in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
In one neighborhood, a river swelled to dangerous levels, Junior Jules told CNN’s iReport. A video Jules sent to CNN showed rain-soaked residents wandering around the Crois-des-Missions bridge as rising waters rushed underneath.
“It is really, really, really bad. The water is almost over the bridge,” he said. “It’s the biggest bridge we’ve got.”
As Matthew drenched Haiti with dozens of inches of rain, Cuba, the Bahamas, and the United States took steps to prepare for the storm’s arrival in the coming days.
Forecasters predict the storm will move near eastern Cuba and over portions of the Bahamas later Tuesday.
Death toll rising
Three people have died in incidents connected to Hurricane Matthew within the past week, authorities said.
In Haiti, Guillaume Albert Moleon, director of communications for the Interior Ministry, said one fisherman died on Sunday. A second fisherman is presumed dead, but his body has not been recovered.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a teenage boy died in a landslide as he was cleaning a drain behind his house, according to Michelle Forbes, deputy director for the National Emergency Management Office. The boy died Wednesday after storms from Matthew passed over the island.
The hurricane could cause further devastation for Haiti as much of the country’s infrastructure remains weak after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.
The Haitian government, which has urged people to find shelters, has identified about 1,000 different facilities as temporary safe havens. More than 300,000 people are in emergency shelters across the country, according to the United Nations.
More than 9,000 people have been evacuated from homes across Haiti, Civil Protection spokesman Joseph Edgard Celestin said.
After the storm clears Haiti, residents could face risks from another threat: standing water left behind.
“That means a potential spike in cholera cases,” said John Hasse, the humanitarian aid agency World Vision’s national director in Haiti. “Other mosquito-borne diseases that have been more or less controlled are going to rear their heads.”
Haiti is still recovering from a post-quake cholera outbreak that killed another 10,000 people.
Collision course for Cuba
In Cuba, forecasters say Matthew could dump up to 20 inches of rain in some isolated parts of the country.
The United States, taking no chances, began to airlift 700 family members of military personnel stationed at Guantanamo Bay to Florida this weekend. Essential military personnel and 61 detainees – held by the United States as alleged enemy combatants – will not be evacuated, officials added.
The US government issued a travel advisory warning Americans in Cuba to find immediate shelter if they haven’t already made travel plans.
From there, Matthew is expected to take a “prolonged trip” toward the Bahamas that’s expected to last through Wednesday night. It would then turn toward the U.S. while losing some of its strength, dropping down to a Category 3 with 120 mph winds.
Multiple cruise lines have rerouted some trips to get out of Matthew’s path. Royal Caribbean, Disney Cruise Line, Norwegian Princess, and Carnival have rerouted trips, with more changes possible.
A Carnival cruise ship that planned to stop in the Bahamas on a six-day excursion will instead visit Cozumel, Mexico, reported the Post-Courier in Charleston, South Carolina.
Journalist Yvetot Gouin and CNN’s Deborah Bloom, Alexander Leininger, Alison Daye, Holly Yan, Steve Visser, Ralph Ellis, Radina Gigova, Faith Karimi, Joe Sterling, Joe Sutton, Patrick Oppmann, Salim Essaid, Michael Holmes, Lindy Royce, and Eliott C. McLaughlin contributed to this report.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Hurricane Matthew lashes Haiti, heads toward Cuba.”
