Hurricane Melissa has left a trail of devastation across the Caribbean, with dozens killed and billions of dollars worth of damage inflicted across the region.
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 49 people have been killed so far, including 19 in Jamaica, 30 in Haiti, and one person in the Dominican Republic. At least 10 children were killed due to flooding caused by the storm when a river burst in Haiti. The death toll is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts get underway.
Despite reducing in intensity, the storm continues to move on. Melissa was last recorded as a Category 2 storm 264 km (164 miles) west of the North Atlantic British island territory of Bermuda, packing maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (161 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center.
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 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, including when it made landfall in Jamaica.
AccuWeather estimates that $48 billion to $52 billion in damage and economic loss has been inflicted across the western Caribbean.
Red Cross teams have been mobilising as Hurricane Melissa has left deaths and devastation across the region.
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 it would provide an additional £5m ($6.71 million) in emergency humanitarian funding to support the Caribbean region’s recovery from hurricane Melissa, after pledging £2.5m earlier this week. 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.
