Hurricane Matthew has surged to a Category 5 storm in the Caribbean Sea, making it the most powerful to develop in the region in nine years.

Matthew is packing house destroying winds of up to 160 mph (260 kph), and is heading towards Jamaica and Cuba. Before dawn on Saturday, the eye of the storm was about 440 miles (710 km) southeast of Jamaica.

"The government is on high alert," he said. "We hope that the hurricane does not hit us, but if it does hit us, we are trying our very best to ensure that we are in the best possible place."

Jamaica was devastated by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, and was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Matthew could be a record-setting storm.

Stocking up in Jamaica

Tenaj Lewis, 41, who was stocking up at a grocery store in Kingston Friday afternoon, said Jamaica was much better prepared for hurricanes than it was when Gilbert struck.

"The country literally shut down for months," she said. Since then, hurricanes have brought a few days of power outages to the island nation, but have not been nearly as destructive.

Jamaica and southern Haiti could see 10-15 inches (25-38 centimeters) of rain could fall across the region, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, just outside of Miami, Florida.

"These rains may produce life-threatening flash flooding and mud slides," the NHC warned, saying isolated areas could be inundated with up to 25 inches of rain. "Some fluctuations in intensity are possible this weekend, but Matthew is expected to remain a powerful hurricane."

Matthew is also expected to hit Haiti and Cuba. Natural disasters have devastated Haiti in the past.

"We will prepare with drinking water for the patients, with medication, with generators for electricity, available vehicles to go look for people at their homes," said Yves Domercant, the head of the public hospital in Les Cayes in the south of Haiti.

Cubans have generally fared better.

"We don`t know yet exactly where it will go, so we`re still waiting to see," said Marieta Gomez, who was following the storm closely on TV and radio. "We Cubans are well prepared."

The storm, which killed one person in St. Vincent and the Grenadines earlier in the week, will continue heading north, but it is unclear if it will strike the United States.

More about: