Hurricane Matthew weakens

Hurricane Matthew slammed into South Carolina yesterday, packing a diminished yet still powerful punch after killing almost 900 people in Haiti and causing major flooding and widespread power outages as it skirted Florida and Georgia.

Now weakened, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 left flooding and wind damage in Florida before moving slowly north to soak coastal Georgia and the Carolinas. Wind speeds had dropped by nearly half from their peak about a week ago to 75 miles per hour (120 kph), reducing it to a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest on the Saffir-Simpson scale of 1 to 5.

Matthew, which topped out as a ferocious Category 5 storm more than a week ago, made landfall near McClellanville, a village 30 miles north of Charleston that was devastated by a Category 4 hurricane in 1989.

The National Hurricane Service said Matthew was over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Saturday afternoon, and warned of potentially life-threatening flooding in Georgia and North Carolina even as the storm slowed as it drove inland.

People gather for aid in Haiti on Friday.

At least five deaths in Florida were attributed to the storm, which knocked out power to almost 1.6 million households and businesses in the US Southeast.

The toll in the United States was far less devastating than in Haiti, where at least 877 people died earlier, a death tally that ticked up as information trickled in from remote areas.

Matthew howled through Haiti's western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mph (233 kph) winds and torrential rain. Some 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said, after the storm hurled the sea onto coastal villages.

The Mesa Verde, a USNavy amphibious transport dock ship, was en route to Haiti to support relief efforts with heavy-lift helicopters, bulldozers, fresh-water delivery vehicles and two operating rooms. The US government was also airlifting emergency supplies, according to the United States Agency for International Development.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders was flying personnel to Haiti by helicopter. The Haitian government warned a deadly outbreak of cholera could worsen, confirming dozens of new cases of the water-borne disease since the storm, 13 of them fatal.

Though gradually weakening, Matthew was forecast to remain a hurricane until it begins moving away today, the NHC said.