Hurricane Matthew batters US; over 570 dead in Haiti

Matthew, the first major hurricane that could hit the United States head on in more than a decade, triggered mass evacuations along the coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.

Southern Florida escaped the brunt of the storm overnight, but US President Barack Obama and other officials urged people farther north not to get complacent.

“I just want to emphasise to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane, that the potential for storm surge, loss of life and severe property damage exists,” Obama told reporters after a briefing with emergency management and other officials.

The Florida city of Jacksonville could face significant flooding and the storm had already cut power to some 600,000 households in the state.

In the Caribbean country of Haiti, where poor rural communities were ravaged by Matthew, the death toll surged to at least 572 people on Friday, as information trickled in from remote areas previously cut off by the storm.

The hurricane smashed through the tip of Haiti's western peninsula on Tuesday with 233km/h winds and torrential rain.

Some 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said, after the storm pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which were only now being contacted.

Cellphone networks were down and roads were flooded by sea and river water in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas.

Craig Fugate, director of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was concerned that relatively light damage so far could give people farther north a false sense of security.

“People should not be looking at the damages they're seeing and saying this storm is not that bad,” Fugate told NBC. People should also be aware the hurricane carried more than just ferocious winds, he said.

“The real danger still is storm surge, particularly in northern Florida and southern Georgia. These are very vulnerable areas. They've never seen this kind of damage potential since the late 1800s.”

Governor Scott has called on some 1.5 million people in coastal areas of Florida to evacuate and he continued to urge people to move away from danger on Friday.

As of Friday morning, about 22,000 people were in Florida shelters and more had moved inland or to the state's west coast. Georgia and South Carolina had also opened dozens of shelters for evacuees.