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Here's Everything You Need to Know about the Devastation in Haiti, and How to Help

Please keep this awful event on your radar.
By Lauren Duca
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A woman prepares some food in front of her destroyed house following the passage of Hurricane Matthew, in Port- Salut, southwest of Port-au-Prince, on October 9, 2016. Haiti began three days of mourning Sunday for hundreds killed in Hurricane Matthew as relief officials grappled with the unfolding devastation in the Caribbean country's hard-hit south. / AFP / RODRIGO ARANGUA (Photo credit should read RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images)AFP/Getty Images

Sometimes it feels like there is way too much news to keep track of it all. In 2016, there is way too much horrific, anxiety-inducing news specifically, but it is important to try your best to stay up to date on what is going on in the world. As America spun out of control politically this weekend, Haiti was decimated by Hurricane Matthew. In the effort to bring the proper amount of attention to this devastating time, we have rounded up the best reporting on everything going on in Port-Salut and the surrounding area.

"Seeing ‘Nothing to Live For’ as Haiti Seeks a Body Count After Hurricane Matthew," by Azam Ahmed for the New York Times

The loss in this coastal town is all but entire. Dead animals float in tidal pools. Cinder-block heaps mark where homes once stood. Trees, stripped of leaves, branches and tops, impale the earth like ragged posts.

But the loss here runs deeper. The local hospital has registered 13 deaths since Hurricane Matthew flung 145-mile-per-hour winds and a wall of water at Port-Salut, but many more have died without so much as an official word.

Read the full article here.

"Cholera outbreaks in Haiti follow devastation of Hurricane Matthew" by Richard Luscombe in Florida and Mark Townsend for The Guardian

“A tree fell on the house and flattened it. The entire house fell on us. I couldn’t get out,” said 27-year-old driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald.

“People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife, who had died in the same spot,” said Jean-Donald, who had been married for only a year. Fears the storm would cause similar damage on the US mainland proved unfounded as the hurricane steadily weakened throughout Saturday, although five deaths were reported – three in North Carolina and two in Georgia.

Read the full article here.

"Hurricane Matthew: Food, Water Shortages Threaten Haiti Victims" by Robbie Whelan for The Wall Street Journal

Within the city was a scene of devastation.

Winds tore the roof off the St. Louis King of France cathedral, while on the Rue Stenio Vincent, the city’s main commercial strip, dozens of businesses and sidewalks had been decimated. Tree branches, downed power lines, and pieces of storefronts and roofs lay in piles of mud. The stench of rotting food filled the air.

Read the full article here.

If you'd like to donate, and have the means to do so, there are several options for reaching out to those struggling in the wake of this horrific natural disaster. Considering giving a bit of your time and / or energy to UNICEF, Save the Children, or the World Relief organization.

Related: Lorde Makes $20,000 Donation to a Children’s Charity

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