Haiti and Jamaica implored residents in vulnerable coastal areas to evacuate and Cuba suspended flights on today as Hurricane Matthew, the strongest storm to menace the Caribbean islands in years, spun slowly toward the region.
Matthew is expected to scrape western Haiti tomorrow as a major storm bringing 230km/h winds and heavy rain to the southern coast, while simultaneously lashing Jamaica.
Eastern Cuba will also feel bands of fierce wind and rains tomorrow, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said.
The NHC ranked the storm at Category 4 on a five-step scale of hurricane intensity. Earlier it had been ranked at Category 5.
The storm was slowly advancing southeast of Kingston this afternoon.
"Slow motion is almost always a bad thing for any land area impacted," said John Cangialosi, a hurricane specialist and meteorologist at the NHC, noting that the storm's devastating rains and winds will linger over the region.
With tropical storm conditions expected to reach Haiti and Jamaica tonight, officials on both islands urged residents to prepare. In Haiti, the prime minister's office issued a red alert warning for landslides, high waves and floods.
Matthew is the most powerful hurricane to form over the Atlantic since Felix in 2007 and as much as 101cm of rain could fall on parts of southern Haiti. That could trigger deadly flash floods and mud slides, the NHC said.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and a combination of weak government and precarious living conditions for most of its people makes it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
More than 200,000 people were killed when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the country in January 2010, wrecking thousands of homes, schools and hospitals.
In Jamaica, which could see up to 64cm of rain, the government was preparing buses to help evacuate villagers in Port Royal, located at the vulnerable edge of Kingston Harbour.
"We're urging persons to evacuate if they live in low-lying or flood-prone areas," said Delmares White, spokeswoman for Jamaica's Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. "We're urging them to do so in order to save lives."
In Kingston, residents stocked up on canned foods, water and batteries ahead of the storm, while banks and offices boarded their windows. Fishermen were told not to go to sea.
Haiti had started evacuating residents by boat from small, exposed sandy islands in the south as a precaution yesterday. Boats were prohibited from going to sea today.
In Cuba, where evacuations were already well under way, many flights were suspended today. In the city of Santiago de Cuba, residents formed long lines for supplies while authorities took down traffic signals to protect them from the wind and hotels boarded up their windows.
