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Killer Hurricane: Matthew Pounding Florida After Leaving 800+ Dead in Haiti

07 October 2016 21:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. One person in Florida is dead and nearly a million are without power as Hurricane Matthew cuts a slow, destructive path northward toward Georgia and South Carolina, APA reports quoting sputniknews.com.

A 58-year-old woman from St. Lucie County, Florida, is being called the first US casualty of the storm. She suffered a heart attack at a time when winds were gusting at 68 mph, preventing emergency crews from traveling. By the time emergency services reached her, she had died.

The Daytona Beach fire department has also suspended operations due to wind, the Weather Channel reported Friday afternoon.

The storm, downgraded to a category 3 hurricane late October 6, has been making its slow way up the Florida coast at about 12 mph, bringing sustained winds of up to 120 mph and storm surges expected to cause widespread destruction in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. In a Friday afternoon update from the National Hurricane Center, National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb said, "Life threatening flooding is occurring in the storm surge area." He commented that the surge wasn’t slow rising, but coming in "with great force." Wind gusts as high as 107 mph were reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida, roughly where the storm began its turn north. The eye of the storm may never actually make landfall, storm watchers say, but the wind and water churned up by its eyewall will do plenty of damage as it continues to spin north-northwest. The storm is expected to turn more strongly north and spare the coast a direct hit. If it instead shifts west, the destruction in its wake could be expected to be much worse. The storm surge is often the most destructive part of a hurricane, and the power of Matthew’s surge is already being seen in Daytona, St. Augustine and points north.