Hurricane Melissa is continuing its path of destruction through the Caribbean after hitting the Bahamas, Cuba and Jamaica.
The “storm of the century” is one of the most powerful in Atlantic history, and the most forceful hurricane to ever hit Jamaica.
At least 34 people have been killed so far, including eight in Jamaica, and one person in the Dominican Republic. Flooding caused by the storm’s effects in Haiti, killed at least 25 people including 10 children, authorities said.
Melissa began as a tropical wave near West Africa, before gaining traction and blowing westward to the Caribbean.
After passing over Jamaica, it made landfall in Cuba on Wednesday. It crawled across the countries with destructive winds and torrential rainfall before passing over to the Bahamas, and now headed towards Bermuda.
Surrounding areas, including the southeastern and central Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, were also at risk of a “life-threatening storm surge” and heavy rainfall, the National Hurricane Centre said. It travelled over the Bahamas as a Category 1 storm, having reached the intensity of a Category 5 over recent days.
Red Cross teams have been mobilising as Hurricane Melissa continues its trajectory across Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Its slow pace makes Hurricane Melissa more destructive, with sustained winds and accumulated rainfall inflicting maximum damage to the vulnerable and low-lying island. Around 70 per cent of Jamaica’s population of over 2.8 million people lives in coastal areas.
“Slow-moving major hurricanes often go down in history as some of the deadliest and most destructive storms on record,” said AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter. “This is a dire situation unfolding in slow motion.”
Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel ordered mass evacuations across the country, with at least 735,000 people being forced to leave their homes to escape the devastation. The National Hurricane Centre warned that the hurricane will inflict a “life-threatening storm surge, flash flooding and landslides”.
In the Bahamas, the government ordered evacuations of residents in the southern portions of that archipelago.
“Early indications are that Hurricane Melissa was a disaster of unprecedented catastrophe for the island,” Alexander Pendry, the charity’s global response manager said on Wednesday. “News is already coming through that whole communities are underwater and that the damage left by the strong winds has been devastating.”
Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness said the country is “expecting that there would be some loss of life” in the aftermath of the event. United Cajun Navy vice-president Brian Trascher estimated that “trillions of gallons of water” would fall on Jamaica.
The UK announced £2.5m in emergency humanitarian funding for Jamaica on Tuesday, as Sir Keir Starmer described scenes from the country as “truly shocking”.
“The reports that we have had so far would include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property as well, and damage to our road infrastructure,” Mr Holness said. “Our country has been ravaged by Hurricane Melissa, but we will rebuild and we will do so even better than before.”
More than 500,000 residents have been left without power, with the parish of St Elizabeth in southwestern Jamaica left completely “underwater”, an official said.
Video of the airport in Montego Bay showed inundated seating areas, broken glass and collapsed ceilings.
Meteorologists at AccuWeather said Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean, after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988 – the last major storm to make landfall in Jamaica.
