Update on Hurricane Matthew - More Deaths for the USA.

I've decided to give you people a relatively early morning update on Hurricane Matthew seeing as I didn't get to do one yesterday due to some 'unfortunate circumstances'.

Quite unsurprisingly, the figures from Haiti have got even worse. From the 842 we knew of a couple of days ago, the official figure has now risen to 'at least 877'. I have no need to tell you that this really isn't good, as despite them being a LEDC, we must've been able to do something to prepare them or tell them so they were able to prepare for themselves. I'm no expert on their communications, or how easy it would've been for us to warn the majority of the population in advance, but it seems to me that a lot of people didn't know it was coming and therefore had very little time to evacuate or prepare, (even though they may not have had many places to evacuate to.) I included a quote in my post two days ago, which could be considered shocking to some people as it quite clearly showed a lack of knowledge of the hurricane entirely. The worst bit is, the death toll in Haiti is only expected to rise, as some of the more isolated and switched off areas haven't been reached yet, so 877 may well rise to 900+ over the coming days.

With my lack of post regarding this hurricane yesterday, I missed most of the fun as Matthew reached the coast of the USA. Nearly 1.5 MILLION homes in 3 states of America have lost power, almost single-handedly showing the scale of this storm, considering that it hasn't really even made landfall yet. I say that, but it's not strictly true, as the hurricane has made limited landfall southeast of McClellanville in South Carolina. This has caused a "serious inland flooding event" as according to the National Hurricane Centre. There have been at least 4 reported deaths in Florida. Although this doesn't sound and can't be considered as bad as the nearly 900 in Haiti, it still is eye opening for some because Florida is highly economically and infrastructurally developed, and there was plenty of warning to all residents to prepare and evacuate. This begs the question: 'Who were these people and where were they/how did they die to the storm?' Well, I researched it and found some pretty vague but also terrible news about them.

One woman died when "a tree fell on her camper trailer". An 82 year old man and woman, (age unknown,) died when they had "medical emergencies" but responders were unable to reach them in time because of "hazardous weather." 

The latter two deaths surprise me more than the first. We're talking about Florida here. Highly developed state, supposedly good infrastructure and transport links. I would've thought that there may have been some preparation regarding the flooding of roads or transport links. HOWEVER, I AM NOT BLAMING THE RESPONDERS OR THE STATE OF FLORIDA FOR THESE DEATHS. It is more than likely that these people may have refused to evacuate because they may not have wanted to leave their home etc etc. It is also true that elderly dependents are some of the most vulnerable in natural disasters such as these. So we can't blame, but only look back on Matthew as a storm that cost many lives, as many as 14 confirmed across 3 states of the USA.

So that about wraps up my summary of the storm. I don't think there will be any more significant developments, but if there are I'll add them as a sidenote to a later post. Hurricane Matthew is the most significant hurricane the World has experienced for a while, and we can only hope that there isn't another one of this size any time soon.

Thank you very much for reading this final post on Hurricane Matthew, and if you have any feedback feel free to comment below, or tweet me @jman0605. Meanwhile, thanks for reading and I will probably have another post later with another news story for the people who want to read.

Thanks :D