Hurricane Matthew downgraded to Category 1 after killing nearly 900 in Haiti
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Hurricane Matthew was downgraded to a Category 1 storm Saturday as it headed toward the Carolinas, though flooding, winds up to 85 mph, and storm surges up to 9 feet are expected.
"I just want to emphasize to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane, that the potential for storm surge, loss of life, and severe property damage exists," President Obama said Friday as the storm weakened, emphasizing that downgrades to the storm's status do not mean the danger is gone.
Before making landfall in the United States, Matthew wreaked havoc in Haiti, where the death toll has nearly reached 900 with tens of thousands more Haitians displaced or made homeless by the storm's devastation. Four people were killed in Florida, and Matthew left at least 1.5 million people without power in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
