Hilary Brown says she sheltered in her hotel bathroom as the ferocious storm battered the island
A Briton in Jamaica said she took shelter in a hotel bathroom after her room flooded during “surreal” Hurricane Melissa.
Melissa is the most powerful storm to hit Jamaica since record-keeping began in 1851, striking the island with 185mph winds, heavy rain and flooding.
The Red Cross said the hurricane had sparked a “disaster of unprecedented catastrophe”, with about 77 per cent of the country left without power.
Hilary Brown, 66, from Barry, south Wales, told The i Paper she travelled to Jamaica for work on 13 October.
She manages artists and musicians and said she planned to meet a delegation from the North Wales Jamaica Society, which travelled to the country on 22 October, with the aim of aiding their work in strengthening ties between the Caribbean nation and the UK.
But amid warnings of the incoming storm, the delegation left on Saturday. Ms Brown decided to stay behind.
“I decided to stay to help in any way I can,” she said. “I have family and friends here in Jamaica. And my work is scheduled to continue after the delegation from Wales was set to leave.”
Ms Brown said safety briefings were organised by her hotel in Montego Bay, with all visitors advised not to leave the premises during the storm.
Speaking to The i Paper from her hotel room on Wednesday, she described the hurricane’s slow build-up as “really quite surreal”.
“[Last] Wednesday evening, Thursday and Friday morning were beautiful, sunny, hot, as you would expect the Caribbean to be… We were on the beach Saturday. Sunday again was quite sunny. Monday, it changed,” she said.
“The waters became very still. There was a slight wind and there were some showers. The skies became much darker. The warnings were regular, updating us as to exactly where the hurricane was heading.
“Although there was some concern, because the hurricane’s behaviour pattern was quite unpredictable, it was moving very, very slow.”
Ms Brown said that it was known from at least Sunday that it was likely to be a category 5 storm, which was very worrying.
When the hurricane finally struck on Tuesday, she said the “sky became very dark”, the wind was “howling” and “the noise became unbearable, like something out of a movie. And then all of a sudden the lights went out. I looked out of my window and it was as if it was at night time.”
The lights in all of the surrounding hotels were out, so it was extremely dark, and she positioned herself in the bathroom “because there were no obvious windows or external doors into the bathroom.
“Whilst I was there, the amount of crashing and banging and slamming I heard was just unbelievable. It was really quite frightening and daunting. And it continued for a number of hours.”
She said she began to hear water entering her room through the patio doors: “I went out to check and although it was in total and complete darkness my feet were splashing around.”
She left her room and came across a member of staff in the hallway. After telling him what happened, he asked her to “sit on the bed and don’t move and leave your door open”.
He returned with four or five other men, and they jumped into action and cleared the water out of her room, she said.
“When the wind had to a certain extent become much quieter and the noise and the wind had subsided, I went outside,” Ms Brown added. “There was lots of items that had blown from roofs. There was lots of zinc fence blown all around the place.
“Everything that I saw was blown off, ripped up and twisted.”
