After Hurricane Matthew, Haiti Faces Crisis and Media Instantly Forgets

Hurricane Matthew’s devastation in Haiti has left the nation facing a humanitarian crisis as corporate media shifts its focus to the storm’s encroachment onto U.S. shores.

As the brief U.S. news coverage of Haiti dissipates, aid groups on the ground are still struggling to reach the most impacted regions, while residents grapple with flooding, mudslides, and a shortage of shelters. The storm’s 145 mile-per-hour winds also took down a bridge, tore the roofs off of houses, and damaged at least one hospital and clinic.

Matthew killed at least 11 people in the Caribbean on Tuesday, with five of those in Haiti, including a 26-year-old man who was attempting to rescue a child from a rushing river, according to the Weather Channel. However, civil protection officials warned that the death toll is hard to calculate due to the extensive damage.

“It’s the worst hurricane that I’ve seen during my life,” one official, Fidele Nicolas of Nippes, told the Associated Press. “It destroyed schools, roads, other structures.”

Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of the Civil Protection Agency, also said Tuesday, “It’s much too early to know how bad things are but we do know there are a lot of houses that have been destroyed or damaged in the south.”