Men push a motorbike through a street flooded by a river that overflowed from heavy rains caused by Hurricane Matthew in Leogane, Haiti, Wednesday. Rescue workers in Haiti struggled to reach cutoff towns and learn the full extent of the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew as the storm began battering the Bahamas on Wednesday and triggered large-scale evacuations along the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)</s>LES CAYES, Haiti - - Hurricane Matthew headed for Haiti on Monday, where towns and villages braced for "catastrophic" floods and mudslides that forecasters fear will be triggered by 140 mile-per-hour winds and up to 3 feet of rain over its denuded hills.

The storm is now forecast to reach the Bahamas on Tuesday and possibly reach Florida by Thursday as a major hurricane, though weaker than at present, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Before that, it will hit Cuba.

"It has the potential of being catastrophic," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the Miami-based hurricane center, when asked about Matthew's expected impact on Haiti.

Haitian Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph said 30,000 people were in areas of risk who should be moved before the storm hits.

However, in Haiti's largest slum, the seaside Cite Soleil in capital Port-au-Prince, Mayor Frederic Hislain said 150,000 people whose homes he said were threatened needed to be bussed to safer places.

"Those people are living all along the seashore in a bunch of huts which usually can't even really protect them from ordinary rain. Now we are talking about a strong hurricane. Imagine the disaster we may have to face here."

Many people are reluctant to leave their homes due to fears their belonging will be stolen.

Matthew, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in recent history, was expected to hit Haiti Monday night, the U.S. hurricane center said. It is expected to bring between 15 and 40 inches of rain to parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Crawling north at just 7 miles per hour, the storm threatens to linger enough for its winds and rain to cause great damage. Haiti is prone to flash floods and mudslides because most of its hillsides have been stripped bare by people cutting down trees to make charcoal to sell for fuel.</s>Motorists line up at a gas station in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on Tuesday to fill their gas tanks in advance of Hurricane Matthew which is expected to affect the South Carolina coast by the weekend. Gov. Nikki Haley announced Tuesday that, unless the track of the storm changes, the state will issue an evacuation order Wednesday to help get 1 million people inland from the coast. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)</s>LES CAYES, Haiti — Two days after Hurricane Matthew rampaged across Haiti's remote southwestern peninsula, authorities and aid workers still lack a clear picture of what they fear is the country's biggest disaster in years.

But as the weather began calming, convoys and helicopters have begun venturing to marooned corners of the country to assess the damage and determine how to help thousands of people who lost homes, livestock and crops.

At least 16 deaths in the Caribbean have been blamed on the storm. The death toll in Haiti alone was raised to 10 by the country's civil protection agency Wednesday evening, but the number was expected to rise.

In southern peninsula towns where Matthew arrived around daybreak Tuesday with 145 mph (235 kph) winds, there was wreckage and misery everywhere.

"The floodwater took all the food we have in the house. Now we are starving and don't have anything to cook," said farmer Antoine Louis as he stood in brown water up to his thighs in the doorway of his deluged concrete shack.

In Aquin, a coastal town outside the battered city of Les Cayes, people trudged through mud around the wreckage of clapboard houses and tiny shops.

Cenita Leconte was one of many who initially ignored calls to evacuate vulnerable shacks before Matthew roared ashore. The 75-year-old was thankful she finally complied and made it through the terrifying ordeal with her life.

"We've lost everything we own. But it would have been our fault if we stayed here and died," she told The Associated Press as neighbors poked through wreckage hoping to find at least some of their meager possessions.

Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of the civil protection agency, said the storm also made roads impassable and knocked out communications in the Grand Anse department, on the opposite side of the narrow peninsula from where Matthew first hit.

"We do know there's a lot of damage in the Grand Anse, and we also know human life has been lost there," Jean-Baptiste said, though the official death toll did not yet include reports from there.

Civil aviation authorities reported counting 3,214 destroyed homes along the southern peninsula, where many families live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and don't always have the resources to escape harm's way.

The government has estimated at least 350,000 people need some kind of assistance after the disaster, which U.N. Deputy Special Representative for Haiti Mourad Wahba has called the country's worst humanitarian crisis since the devastating earthquake of 2010.

International aid groups are already appealing for donations for a lengthy recovery effort in Haiti, the hemisphere's least developed and most aid-dependent nation.

In coming days, U.S. military personnel equipped with nine helicopters were expected to start arriving in the capital to help deliver food and water to hard-hit areas.

Jean-Michel Vigreux, the country director in Haiti for the nonprofit group CARE, his group hadn't yet been able to communicate with its team in Grande Anse. "It is very scary," he said.

With answers slow to come, some Haitians in the crowded capital were convinced their homeland had been largely spared the kind of suffering that severe weather has wrought in the past.

"The news on the radio doesn't seem nearly as bad as it could have been," upholsterer Daniel Wesley said as he walked down a rain-slicked street in downtown Port-au-Prince which was largely spared from the storm.

The last Category 4 storm to pound Haiti was Hurricane Flora in 1963, which killed as many as 8,000 people.

In nearby Cuba, Matthew blew across that island's sparsely populated eastern tip, destroying dozens of homes and damaging hundreds in the island's easternmost city, Baracoa. But the government oversaw the evacuation of nearly 380,000 people and strong measures were taken to protect communities and infrastructure, U.N. officials said.

Early Thursday, Matthew was pounding the central the Bahamas on a path forecast to take it close to the U.S. East Coast, where authorities were carrying out large-scale evacuations. Forecasters said Matthew, which had dropped slightly to a dangerous Category 3 storm after crossing land in Haiti and eastern Cuba, was expected to strengthen anew in the coming day.</s>Men push a motorbike through a street flooded by a river that overflowed from heavy rains caused by Hurricane Matthew in Leogane, Haiti, Wednesday. Rescue workers in Haiti struggled to reach cutoff towns and learn the full extent of the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew as the storm began battering the Bahamas on Wednesday and triggered large-scale evacuations along the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)</s>Men push a motorbike through a street flooded by a river that overflowed from heavy rains caused by Hurricane Matthew in Leogane, Haiti, Wednesday. Rescue workers in Haiti struggled to reach cutoff towns and learn the full extent of the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew as the storm began battering the Bahamas on Wednesday and triggered large-scale evacuations along the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)</s>Motorists line up at a gas station in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on Tuesday to fill their gas tanks in advance of Hurricane Matthew which is expected to affect the South Carolina coast by the weekend. Gov. Nikki Haley announced Tuesday that, unless the track of the storm changes, the state will issue an evacuation order Wednesday to help get 1 million people inland from the coast. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)</s>Hurricane Matthew moved over the Caribbean with experts warning that Haiti could see the worst of the punishing winds as rain was falling in Jamaica.

The powerful Category 4 hurricane had winds of 145mph on Sunday evening. Its centre was expected to pass to the east of Jamaica and be very close to the south-western tip of Haiti late on Monday before reaching Cuba on Tuesday, the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti. Forecasters said the southern Haitian countryside around Jeremie and Les Cayes could suffer most from the torrential rains and strong winds.

"Wherever that centre passes close to would see the worst winds and that's what's projected to happen for the western tip of Haiti," said John Cangilosi, a hurricane specialist at the US centre.

"There is a big concern for rains there and also a big concern for storm surge."

Matthew is one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in recent history and briefly reached the top classification, Category 5, becoming the strongest hurricane in the region since Felix in 2007.

The hurricane centre said the storm appeared to be on track to pass east of Florida through the Bahamas, but it was too soon to predict with certainty whether it would reach the US coast.

Officials with Haiti's civil protection agency said there were roughly 1,300 emergency shelters across the country, enough to hold up to 340,000 people.

The authorities broadcast warnings over the radio telling people to swiftly heed evacuation warnings, trying to counter a common tendency for people to prefer to stay in their homes to protect them during natural disasters.

In an address on Sunday carried on state radio, interim President Jocelerme Privert urged Haitians to listen closely to the warnings of officials and be ready to move.

"To those people living in houses that could collapse, it's necessary that you leave these houses to take refuge in schools and churches," he said.

Teams of civil protection officials walked the streets of Les Cayes and other areas urging residents to secure their homes, prepare emergency kits and warn their neighbours.

They also evacuated people from some outlying islands. Many Haitians appeared unaware of the looming hurricane.</s>The storm ripped through Haiti on Tuesday, causing heavy flooding and knocking down houses.

Citing Haitian authorities, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at least 350,000 people needed immediate assistance.

The full impact remained unclear, however, with communications down in many of the worst-affected areas.

Here are what some of the world's leading aid agencies expect will be humanitarian needs in Haiti in the storm's wake.

"Initial information reaching us is worrying. Many affected people have lost their homes, crops, and livestock. We will have to face a logistical challenge to reach these very remote areas and provide humanitarian assistance which these isolated populations need. We also fear that the floods caused by Hurricane Matthew entail substantial health risks such as the spread of cholera." Carlos Veloso, World Food Programme's country director:

"Because of the severity in the south, we expect that certain roads will be closed and we need to repair them immediately. The second big challenge will be the access to populations in the mountains in the south. Normally access here is not easy, and with a hurricane the strength of Matthew it will become more difficult." Sylvie Savard, country representative in the joint office of the Lutheran World Federation and Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe in Haiti:

"The most affected groups are those most vulnerable living in areas along the coast, in low lying areas or close to steep slopes. Many people, especially in rural areas, live in poorly constructed homes that could not stand up to the winds and rains. People have been evacuated to save their lives, but the storm and the floods will have swept away what little they have." Jean Claude Fignole, Oxfam's influence program director in Haiti:

"Our first response will concentrate on saving lives by providing safe water and hygiene kits to avoid the spread of cholera. Right now there are at least 10,000 people displaced from their homes and in need of safe shelter, water and food." Ravi Tripptrap, Malteser International Americas' executive director:

"The floods have been particularly damaging in the slum community of Cité Soleil. Sewage canals are overflowing and filling the streets with garbage and human waste; make-shift shanty homes have been washed away. This is where our help is needed."</s>President Obama met today with FEMA officials regarding Hurricane Matthew.He asked U.S. citizens to keep in mind that one of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti, is already suffering from a range of previous disasters, and has been hit “really hard by this storm.”“We anticipate that they’re going to need substantial help,” Obama said.The president encouraged U.S. citizens to consider helping those “who didn’t have a lot to begin with and our now getting hammered by this storm.” Those willing can get more information by visiting the Center for International Disaster Information Obama also recommended that U.S. citizens in the path of Matthew visit Ready.gov for clear recommendations on how to stay safe. (
Weather forecasters track Hurricane Matthew as it makes landfall in Haiti and issue hurricane warnings for Cuba and the Bahamas.