Haiti after Hurricane Matthew: 'We've lost everything'

JEREMIE, Haiti _ Houses stood without tops, trees without leaves and the people without hope.

What Hurricane Matthew's Category 4 winds didn't tear a hole in during its assault on this city, it snapped in two like a pencil, turning a deforested Haiti's last green space into a desolate disaster zone of fallen trees and destroyed homes.

Once clear rivers are now streams of mud, and fields and roadways are littered with concrete and personal belongings.

"We've lost everything _ our animals, our harvest, our documents," said Andre Moise, 26. "All we have is the clothes you see on our backs, and the water from the coconuts."

Once majestic coconut-bearing trees now lay on the ground scattered with sweet coconut milk.

"There is no avocado, no breadfruit," said Franzy Michel, 28.

Michel said residents needed help. But he and others worried that aid would not reach them. "It's always promised and up to now, we've never seen it."

Others say the destruction was so daunting that they doubt the government, which promised Thursday to lead the reconstruction effort, could shoulder the burden.

On Thursday, after days of isolation, residents in Haiti's Grand' Anse region finally came in contact with the outside world. Aid workers and Haitian government disaster teams arrived to begin an assessment of the damage. It is still unclear how many people died during Matthew, which residents said arrived with force between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. Tuesday, forcing many like Angelie Leonard to pick up their children and make a run for the nearest shelter in the middle of the storm.

"The rain was salty," Leonard said. "But the wind, it came with force. It lifted up houses and dropped them."

Leonard said her home, built of rocks, is gone.

Added Michel: "We're living a difficult moment."

With the death toll in Haiti at more than 250 people and expected to rise, plus widespread catastrophic damage, Haitian government officials speaking in the aftermath of the hurricane vowed Thursday to take charge of their country's reconstruction _ even as they began to assess the destruction from the storm.

"There are a lot of areas in the country that have been affected, a lot of places that are difficult to access," said interim President Jocelerme Privert, speaking during a news conference at the National Palace.

Haitian officials said more than 28,000 houses have been damaged so far _ houses not built with concrete blocks suffered the most _ but the tally of damages is only in the initial stages. All international assistance will be coordinated through the Haitian government, they said.

On Wednesday, Privert, traveling in a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft, got his first look at the battered coastline along the southern peninsula. He offered sympathies to all the families impacted by the storm.

"What we saw out of the airplane's window," he said, "the situation is really catastrophic ... it is truly a disaster."

The U.S. Agency for International Development said a Joint Task Force from U.S. Southern Command was providing logistics, and airlifting relief supplies and humanitarian workers to communities cut off by the storm.

The Haitian government said that it welcomes international assistance, but unlike the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake _ when the international community decided where aid would go, without accounting for where it actually went _ the Haitian government will take charge of the reconstruction after Matthew.

A ministerial commission was empaneled to coordinate the aid.

"The response that all of our partners want to give, it is us, the government who will tell them where we have needs," said Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles. "So the different sectors can have control over what's happening on the ground."

People will not "just be able to land and say they are here to bring assistance, and then when we do the evaluation we realize that there is nothing to show for it," he said.

As Haitian government ministers deployed across the country Thursday to check on damages, they were accompanied by United Nations disaster response teams and humanitarian groups.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York, Farhan Haq, a spokesman, said that Haitian officials estimate at least 350,000 people are in immediate need of humanitarian help, although that number may rise as assessments come in from areas with limited communication.

Haq reported that nearly 1,900 homes were flooded. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed.

More than 21,000 people remained in shelters, according to Edgar Celestin, a spokesman from the Office of Civil Protection. He said the number of deaths and the amount of damage are expected to rise, especially in hard-hit areas such as the Grand' Anse. The department on Haiti's southern peninsula remained mostly cut off from communication, with the worst damage reported from Port Salut West to Dame Marie. Other parts of the country were also seeing major damage.

"Everybody's house is destroyed, the people can't eat and have to drink coconut water to sustain them," said former Sen. Francky Exius, who is from Les Cayes.

Exius, who complained about the slow response of the government, said two bridges are damaged in Port Salut.

"The people are demoralized; they have no hope," he said.

Jean-Michel Vigreux, CARE Haiti country director, reported that in Jeremie, in the Grand' Anse, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

"All phone lines and electricity are down. Access is completely cut off, and everyone is running out of food and money. The bank is offline. Everyone is very shaken up," he reported.

In Arcahaie, the biggest banana-growing region in Haiti, approximately 80 percent of banana crops were destroyed by winds and flooding, reported Christy Delafield, a spokeswoman for Mercy Corps, a nonprofit providing humanitarian relief in the country.

Delafield said in an email that the destroyed banana crops supported about 20,000 families in the region, and that farmers may have difficulty replanting the crops because of saltwater intrusion from flooding.

Cholera has also been a fear in the wake of the storm. Vigreux reported three cases in the Jeremie hospital, a facility with no generator. The World Health Organization reported five new cases of cholera in Randel on Oct. 3.

Since the large cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010, the epidemic has been contained, but outbreaks continue. According to the WHO, Haiti has reported 754,972 cholera cases, including 9,393 deaths, from the beginning of the epidemic in October 2010 through the end of December 2015.

A total of 36,045 cholera cases were reported in 2015, an increase of 30 percent, or 27,753 cases, over the prior year.

Vigreux also reported that Jacmel, capital of the Department South-East, was hit hard, with the number of people in shelters rising from 2,700 to 4,000.

The U.S., Venezuela and Holland have all offered aid to Haiti in the aftermath of the storm. A humanitarian flight from Venezuela flew into Haiti on Wednesday with supplies to help victims.

The World Food Program, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, along with nongovernment organizations, all reported scaling up their operations in Haiti for critical shelter, water, sanitation and food assistance.

On Wednesday, Haiti postponed its scheduled rerun of the presidential elections that had been set for Sunday. No new date has been set.