Hurricane Matthew killed almost 900 people and left tens of thousands homeless in Haiti before ploughing northward yesterday over waters just off the southeastern US, where it caused flooding and widespread power outages. The number of deaths in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, surged to at least 877 as information trickled in from remote areas previously cut off by the storm.Matthew triggered mass evacuations along the US coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.US President Barack Obama urged people not to be complacent and to heed safety instructions.Matthew smashed through Haiti's western peninsula early in the week 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.story_article_left1While highlighting the misery of underdevelopment in Haiti, the storm looked certain to rekindle the debate about global warming and the threat posed by rising sea levels.At least three towns in the hills and coast of Haiti's fertile western tip reported dozens of people killed, including the farming village of Chantal where the mayor said 86 people were killed, mostly when trees crushed houses. He said 20 others were missing."A tree fell on the house and flattened it. The entire house fell on us. I couldn't get out," said driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald, 27, who had been married for only a year."People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife who had died in the same spot," Jean-Donald said, his young daughter by his side, crying "Mommy".The Mesa Verde, a US Navy amphibious transport dock ship, is heading for Haiti to support relief efforts. The ship has heavy-lift helicopters, bulldozers, fresh water delivery vehicles and two surgical operating rooms.Matthew sideswiped Florida's coast with winds of up to 195km/h but did not make landfall in the state. The US National Hurricane Center downgraded the storm to a category two as its sustained winds dropped.There were at least four storm-related deaths in Florida but no immediate reports of significant damage in cities and towns where the storm swamped streets, toppled trees and knocked out power to more than a million people.Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was concerned that people up the coast had a false sense of security."People should not be looking at the damages ... and saying this storm is not that bad. The real danger still is storm surge. They've never seen this kind of damage potential since the late 1800s."..