NINE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS have died after a bridge that they were working on collapsed into a valley in Chirajara, Colombia.

The bridge was to be part of a highway connecting the Colombian capital Bogotá with the city of Villavicencio. Yesterday, the middle section of the 450m-long bridge collapsed, killing nine workers and injuring at least five others.

The construction company charged with building the motorway bridge released a statement on its website saying that it would help the families of the workers who died or were injured in the incident.

“Coviandes, its shareholders, its board of directors and collaborators express their deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” the company said, listing the names of the employees who died.

It added that experts will examine the scene of the collapse to investigate the causes of the event.

Read: At least two dead and over a dozen injured in Belgium ‘gas explosion’ </s> "The death toll is rising on an hourly basis as aid workers and authorities get into these really hard-hit regions where not only communication and power were knocked out, but the roads were knocked out, so there has really been no way in," CNN International Correspondent Shasta Darlington reported from Port-au-Prince on Saturday morning.

"Four people are missing, 211 are injured and more than 60,000 people are now displaced from the killer storm," he said.

"We do not know the exact number; we cannot find all the people," Haitian senator Herve Fourcand, told CNN on Saturday.

Other media outlets report much higher deaths. A count by Reuters, based on information from local civil protection officials, put the death toll well over 800. "It's only now that we're beginning to really understand the extent of the devastation," Darlington said. A man stands in the remnants of a house destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in the southern town of Les Cayes on Monday, October 10. Matthew wreaked havoc in Haiti, killing hundreds, destroying homes and knocking out electricity in the impoverished Caribbean nation. More than 1.4 million people are in need of urgent assistance, a UN official says. Two young men who lost their homes awake from a tent in the courtyard of a school where they took shelter in Port Salut on October 10. A woman sits in debris where her house once stood in Les Cayes on October 10. A group works to clear debris from the streets in Les Anglais on October 10. A man uses salvaged material to build a makeshift roof for his damaged house in Port-a-Piment on October 10. People sick with cholera receive medical assistance at a hospital in Jeremie on October 10. The destruction from Matthew has accelerated the cholera epidemic in Haiti and undermined strides made in fighting the waterborne disease, the country's leader says. People cross one of the many southern coastal rivers where bridges were knocked out or damaged near Port-a-Piment on October 10. People pass damaged buildings in a seaside fishing neighborhood of Port Salut on Sunday, October 9. People bathe and wash clothes in a river that runs through Roche-à-Bateaux on October 9. Concerns are rising in the storm's aftermath about cholera, caused by the ingestion of contaminated water or food. US soldiers unload bags of food from a helicopter in the hard-hit coastal city of Jeremie on October 9. Worshippers pray at a Jeremie church destroyed by Matthew on October 9. A cholera patient receives treatment at a state hospital in Jeremie on October 9. Family members react during the funeral of Roberto Laguerre, 32, on Saturday, October 8, in Jeremie. Laguerre was killed when the hurricane struck. Andrenne Joseph dries her clothes near the remains of her house in Jeremie on October 8. Residents of Jeremie wait on the shore October 8 as a boat with water and food from the "Mission of Hope" charity arrives. Jeremie appears to be the epicenter of Haiti's growing humanitarian crisis in the wake of the storm. Corn salvaged from destroyed crops dries in the sun Saturday after Hurricane Matthew swept through Jeremie. People unload food and water from a "Mission of Hope" charity boat Saturday after Hurricane Matthew swept through Jeremie. An aerial view of damage to the small village of Casanette near Baumond, Haiti on Saturday. The full scale of the devastation in rural Haiti is becoming clear in the days after Hurricane Matthew leveled huge swaths of the country's south. Haitians gather along a flooded street in Haiti on Friday, October 7. Palm trees lie flattened on the ground after high winds knocked them over. Rubble lies in the street in the aftermath of the storm. Residents carry a coffin containing the remains of a pregnant woman, a victim of Hurricane Matthew, in Jeremie on Friday, October 7. People across southwest Haiti were digging through the wreckage of their homes Friday, salvaging what they could of their meager possessions. An aerial view shows destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew in Jeremie, Haiti, on Friday, October 7. The damage from Hurricane Matthew was especially brutal in southern Haiti, where sustained winds of 130 mph punished the country. Damaged homes are shown on Friday, October 7, in Haiti, where the death toll is in the hundreds. A young man stands near the cathedral damaged by Hurricane Matthew, in Jeremie, Haiti, on October 7. A man dries toys recovered from the debris left by Hurricane Matthew in Les Cayes, Haiti, on Thursday, October 6. A girl washes mud from her feet after Hurricane Matthew passed through Les Cayes, Haiti, on October 6. Fallen trees litter the ground outside a damaged church in Les Cayes on October 6. Hundreds of people have been killed in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said, with the death toll expected to rise. Girls wade through a flooded street in Les Cayes on October 6. Two days after the storm, authorities and aid workers in Haiti still lack a clear picture of what they fear is the country's biggest disaster in years. Saint Anne Church in Les Cayes is reduced to ruins. In the wake of the storm, the Electoral Commission postponed the country's presidential election, which had been scheduled for Sunday. Men push a motorbike through a flooded street in Leogane on October 5. More than 300,000 people are in shelters across the country, the United Nations said.

 A man carries a woman across a river at Petit Goave on October 5. A bridge collapsed because of the storm. A woman cleans her flooded home following the overflowing of La Rouyonne River on October 5 in Leogane. Residents could face risks from standing water. Haiti is still recovering from a cholera outbreak after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Nice Simon, the mayor of Tabarre, holds a baby on October 3, as she helps evacuate the area along a river. Matthew struck the southwestern peninsula with winds of 125 mph (200 kph) and heavy rains that flattened homes, flooded villages, razed crops, swept away cattle and cut off the parts of the island. The U.S. State Department warned citizen travelers of "serious problems concerning emergency response/medical care infrastructure and crime in Haiti," in a statement released Friday. Worse still, there are warnings the aftermath could worsen the nation's cholera epidemic , which killed at least 10,000 people after the 2010 earthquake. "Cholera is the biggest problem right now," Fourcand said. "We need clean water. The water here is so dirty." An estimated 500,000 children live in the areas in the southern region most affected by Hurricane Matthew, UNICEF said in a statement. Agency representative Marc Vincent, who is in Haiti, said they are "still far from having a full picture of the extent of the damage" and "are hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst." UN officials said the hurricane is the country's worst humanitarian crisis since the devastating 2010 earthquake. "The focus right now is getting aid to these people who were affected. So they have to get in clean water, they have to get in food and shelter," Darlington said. </s> A flyover of Haiti by the U.S. Coast Guard shows the devastation left in Matthew's path.

Overnight, the death toll rose to at least 140 people killed by the storm, and officials say many more are still missing.

The brunt of the storm hit the southwestern Tiburon Peninsula, where most of the fatalities were reported.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is considered highly vulnerable to natural disasters.

Food and wanter is scarce, and hospitals are short on resources.

Health officials fear there may be an upsurge in cholera from water contamination after Matthew.

With the country's long-delayed presidential election postponed because of the hurricane, the road to building back may have only just begun. </s> PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti/DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Hurricane Matthew killed almost 900 people and left tens of thousands homeless in Haiti earlier this week before it skirted Florida’s Atlantic coast on Friday and plowed northward over waters just off Georgia.

The number of deaths in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, surged to at least 877 on Friday as information trickled in from remote areas previously cut off by the storm, according to a Reuters tally of death tolls given by officials.

Matthew triggered mass evacuations along the U.S. coast from Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina and North Carolina.

U.S. President Barack Obama urged people not to be complacent and to heed safety instructions.

“The potential for storm surge, loss of life and severe property damage exists,” Obama told reporters after a briefing with emergency management officials about the fiercest cyclone to affect the United States since Superstorm Sandy four years ago.

Matthew smashed through Haiti’s western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (233 kph) 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.

While highlighting the misery of underdevelopment in Haiti, which is still recovering from a devastating 2010 earthquake, the storm looked certain to rekindle the debate about global warming and the long-term threat posed by rising sea levels to low-lying cities and towns.

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 died, 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.”

With cellphone networks down and roads flooded, aid has been slow to reach hard-hit areas in Haiti. Food was scarce and at least seven people died of cholera, likely because of flood water mixing with sewage.

The Mesa Verde, a U.S. Navy amphibious transport dock ship, was heading for Haiti to support relief efforts. The ship has heavy-lift helicopters, bulldozers, fresh water delivery vehicles and two surgical operating rooms.

FOUR KILLED IN FLORIDA

Matthew sideswiped Florida’s coast with winds of up to 120 mph (195 kph) but did not make landfall in the state. The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded the storm to a Category 2 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity as its sustained winds dropped to 110 mph. Category 5 is the strongest.

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 1 million people.

Two people were killed by falling trees, according to Florida officials, and an elderly couple died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator while sheltering from the storm inside a garage.

Pictures are seen on the floor of a destroyed house after Hurricane Matthew passes Jeremie, Haiti, October 7, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Hurricane warnings late on Friday extended up the Atlantic coast from northeast Florida through Georgia and South Carolina and into North Carolina.

In Daytona Beach, the street under the city’s famed “World’s Most Famous Beach” sign was clogged with debris washed up by the ocean. The waves had receded by early afternoon but there was damage throughout the city, including a facade ripped off the front of a seaside hotel.

Robert Walker, a 51-year-old mechanic, weathered the worst of the storm in his seaside Daytona Beach apartment where high-powered winds peeled back the roof.

“It sounded like a jet plane coming over. I was scared,” said Walker as he stood in front of the battered remains of the two-story building..

At 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT Saturday), Matthew’s eye was about 115 miles (185 km) south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and moving northward at 12 mph (19 kph), the NHC said.

After passing near or over the coast of Georgia it was on a track that would put it near or over South Carolina on Saturday. Though gradually weakening, it was forecast to remain a hurricane until it begins moving away from the U.S. Southeast on Sunday, the NHC said.

RELUCTANT TO LEAVE

Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he was concerned that relatively light damage so far could give people up the coast 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.

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“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,” Fugate said.

In St. Augustine just south of Jacksonville, Florida, about half of the 14,000 residents refused to heed evacuation orders despite warnings of an 8-foot (2.4-meter) storm surge that could sink entire neighborhoods, Mayor Nancy Shaver said in a telephone interview from the area’s emergency operations center.

Television images later showed water surging through streets in the historic downtown area of St. Augustine, the oldest U.S. city and a major tourist attraction.

“There’s that whole inability to suspend disbelief that I think really affects people in a time like this,” Shaver said. </s> Hurricane Matthew has left at least 23 people dead in Haiti, a toll likely to climb as authorities re-establish contact with the hardest-hit areas where the damage is "catastrophic," officials said.

The Caribbean's worst storm in nearly a decade, Matthew slammed into Haiti, the Americas' poorest nation, with heavy rains and devastating winds, triggering severe flooding and mud slides.

"The situation in the main cities we flew over was catastrophic," Haiti's interim president Jocelerme Privert said, after he surveyed damage to the country's south on Wednesday in a US Coast Guard plane.

"Jeremie, Les Cayes, Port-Salut, Petite-Riviere de Nippes, Dame Marie, among others, require all intervention without delay," he said, according to a Wednesday statement.

In addition to the 23 killed, three people remain missing, civil protection spokesman Edgar Celestin said, warning that the toll did not include the department of Grande Anse, which was in the eye of the storm and has been cut off from communication.

Authorities were "briefly able to contact Jeremie (the department capital), but we don't have information from other communities," Celestin said.

"We're making every effort to care for these people. The priority is drinking water and food," Celestin said.

Matthew's overall death toll now stands at 27, including four people killed in the Dominican Republic.

Interior ministry spokesman Guillaume Albert Moleon told AFP that officials "can already see the situation seems very concerning," adding that 25 injuries had been reported.

Flooding brought on by Matthew has sparked a resurgence of cholera, with eight cases already reported.

Torrential rains have left around 2,000 homes flooded and damaged 10 schools, according to the latest partial assessment by authorities.

Both the death and damage tolls are likely to rise as rescue teams reach communities that have been cut off for the last 24 hours.

Emergency services have been hampered by the collapse of a bridge, which closed off access to the only road linking Port-au-Prince to the peninsula that makes up southern Haiti. </s> PORT-DE-PAIX, Haiti (AP) — The death toll from a 5.9 earthquake that hit Haiti over the weekend rose to 15 people with 333 injured, authorities said Monday, as thousands of people slept outdoors fearing aftershocks would topple their cracked homes.

Haiti's civil protection agency said it will soon deploy 70 soldiers to the Nord-Ouest and Artibonite provinces that were hardest hit, noting it already sent 14 soldiers along with nurses and doctors to the area.

Thousands of people along Haiti's north coast dragged mattresses and chairs outside after a strong 5.2 magnitude aftershock on Sunday rattled cinderblock homes already cracked by Saturday's earthquake.

Among them was Marc-Sena Docteur, a 24-year-old carpenter whose girlfriend died in the earthquake.

"Now I'm left with a 9-month-old baby with no aid at all," he said. "I'm still crying. I don't know what I'm going to do without her."

The walls of the room that the couple had been renting for a year collapsed, and he and the baby have been sleeping outdoors since the quake.

Sunday's aftershock caused panic on streets where emergency teams were providing relief to victims. The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the aftershock was located 9.8 miles (15.8 kilometers) north-northwest of Port-de-Paix, which is about 136 miles (219 kilometers) from the capital of Port-au-Prince.

On Monday, Haiti's Ministry of Communication released figures stating that at least 15 people had died, nine in Port-de-Paix, one in Saint-Louis du Nord and 5 in Gros Morne. Among the dead were a 5-year-old boy crushed by his collapsing house.

Impoverished Haiti, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. A vastly larger magnitude 7.1 quake damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

Etanvie Dimorne, a 50-year-old mason, said people have to rebuild stronger given the earthquakes that have hit Haiti. He lost his home in Saturday's quake and is now sleeping under a tarp in someone's yard.

"Last night it rained," he said. "I have to sleep under difficult conditions."

President Jovenel Moise urged people to donate blood and asked international aid agencies to coordinate with local agencies to avoid duplicated efforts. The government did not provide an estimate of the damages.

The quake was felt only lightly in the capital, as well as in the neighboring Dominican Republic and in eastern Cuba, where no damage was reported.

In Haiti, officials have struggled to shore up buildings despite the two major fault lines along Hispaniola, which is the island shared with the Dominican Republic.

Pierre Jacques Baudre, a farmer and father of seven, said he was afraid to return to his home after one wall built with rocks and cement crumbled.

"The house can fall at any time," he said. </s> At least 10 construction workers died in Colombia on Monday after the bridge they were working on near Capital city Bogota collapsed. Colombian Civil Defence authorities said nine of them were killed at the site and the tenth succumbed to injuries in hospital, CNN reported.

“We are still working to verify the total number of people who were working at the time,” they said in a statement.

Known as the Chirajara bridge, the 450-m structure was meant to be part of a highway connecting Bogota with the city of Villavicencio in the east. Coviandes, the company working on the project, said it would help the families of the victims as well as those injured in the collapse, the BBC reported. </s> PORT-DE-PAIX, Haiti (AP) — The death toll from a magnitude 5.9 earthquake that hit near northern Haiti has increased to 17. Officials say nine people died in the north coastal city of Port-de-Paix, seven in…

PORT-DE-PAIX, Haiti (AP) — The death toll from a magnitude 5.9 earthquake that hit near northern Haiti has increased to 17.

Officials say nine people died in the north coastal city of Port-de-Paix, seven in Gros Morne and one in Saint-Louis de Nord.

The government said late Monday that another 333 people were injured and that at least 7,783 families are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Saturday’s quake also destroyed four schools and damaged thousands of homes.

A magnitude 5.2 aftershock hit Haiti on Sunday, prompting thousands of people to sleep outdoors for fear of their safety.

Officials in Haiti have struggled to shore up buildings due to the two major fault lines along Hispaniola, which is the island shared with the Dominican Republic.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed. </s> PORT-AU-PRINCE: The death toll from the earthquake that struck northwest Haiti over the weekend has risen to 17, with nearly 350 others injured, the interior ministry said on Tuesday (Oct 9).

Nine people were killed in the coastal city of Port-de-Paix, the closest major town to the quake's epicentre.

Seven more died in Gros-Morne, about 50 kilometres to the southeast and one was killed in the city of Saint-Louis du Nord, the ministry said.

Emergency personnel deployed to the quake zone have said roughly 7,800 homes were either destroyed or damaged in the 5.9-magnitude tremor, according to the authorities.

In Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, building codes are often not respected, meaning that an earthquake of even a moderate size can result in fatalities and level buildings.

The country's Nord-Ouest department, where Port-de-Paix is located, is the worst-off part of Haiti, with many areas isolated due to the dire state of the roads.

The quake and several aftershocks were felt as far away as the capital Port-au-Prince, sparking fear among residents still reeling from the massive 2010 earthquake that left at least 200,000 people dead.
A bridge in Haiti connecting Port-au-Prince with southern Haiti collapses. The storm has killed at least nine people in the Caribbean.