Hurricane Matthew has now been declared a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. With winds over 140 miles per hour, Matthew has already produced heavy rainfall on the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela where a tropical storm warning has been released. It is expected that the hurricane will strengthen as it maintains its northern trajectory through the center of the Caribbean hitting Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba in the following hours and days.
Oxfam staff are monitoring the situation closely and are preparing for an eventual evaluation of damage in Cuba, Haiti, Colombia and Dominican Republic, where it has national offices and emergency response capacity in place.