Haiti has begun evacuating residents from high-risk areas as Hurricane Matthew threatens widespread damage with flash floods and winds of up to 240km\/h (150mph), forecasters say.<\/p>\n
The strongest hurricane in the Atlantic in almost a decade is expected to hit Haiti and Jamaica on Monday, the US National Hurricane Center says.<\/p>\n
Residents have been frantically stocking up on emergency supplies..<\/p>\n
Jamaica’s PM has urged citizens to make all preparations before it is too late.<\/p>\n
But Andrew Holness told Reuters news agency that the country was prepared for the category four hurricane.<\/p>\n
In Jamaica, the powerful storm is expected to bring up to 64 cm (25 inches) of rain, which could trigger life-threatening landslides and floods, according to forecasters.<\/p>\n
In the capital Kingston, supermarkets were crowded with people looking for canned foods, water and flashlights.<\/p>\n
Officials have warned the high winds could batter Jamaica’s main tourist areas including Montego Bay in the north.<\/p>\n
In Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, residents from outlying islands have been evacuated, and officials have banned boating.<\/p>\n
The hurricane is expected to cause up to 101 cm (40 inches) of rain there.<\/p>\n
Matthew is expected to hit Cuba on Tuesday, potentially hitting the colonial city of Santiago de Cuba and the US Navy base of Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n
A mandatory evacuation of non-essential personnel, including about 700 family members of military personnel, was underway at the base and everyone remaining there was being told to take shelter, the Navy said in a statement.<\/p>\n
There are about 5,500 people living on the base, including 61 men held at the detention centre.<\/p>\n
Cuban President Raul Castro travelled to Santiago to supervise preparations.<\/p>\n
Matthew is the strongest storm in the region since Hurricane Felix in 2007. It briefly reached the top category five on a scale of intensity, before weakening slightly.
\n–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haiti has begun evacuating residents from high-risk areas as Hurricane Matthew threatens widespread damage with flash floods and winds of up to 240km\/h (150mph), forecasters say. The strongest hurricane in the Atlantic in almost a decade is expected to hit Haiti and Jamaica on Monday, the US National Hurricane Center says. Residents have been frantically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":254060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[4980],"class_list":["post-254059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-haiti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/254060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}