Hurricane Melissa Ravages Caribbean, Death Toll Climbs

Hurricane Melissa has left a trail of devastation across the Caribbean, and the death toll keeps climbing. More than thirty lives lost so far, and entire communities are struggling to recover. On Tuesday afternoon, the Category Five monster slammed into Jamaica with winds topping one hundred and eighty-five miles per hour, ripping apart homes and flooding neighborhoods. Three-quarters of the island is still without power or phone service. In Haiti, the storm’s wrath was just as brutal, at least twenty-five people killed after rivers burst their banks following days of relentless rain. And this morning, Melissa made landfall in Cuba as a Category Three hurricane, cutting off more than one hundred and forty people before barreling toward the Bahamas. Earlier today, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency gave an update on this unfolding disaster. Here’s what they had to say.

 

Melissa Meade, Director, Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency

“In today’s press release emerging from Jamaica preliminary National reports confirmed that approximately twenty-five thousand persons are in eight hundred thirty-two emergency shelters island wide. Major flooded is recorded in Montego Bay where the Barnett River overflowed it by up to sixteen feet, submerging West Gate and Freeport. infrastructural damage and blocked roads reported in St Elizabeth Manchester, Clarendon and St Thomas. Seventy-seven or five hundred forty thousand of the of the Jamaica power services customers remain power at this time, while approximately seven hundred, assistance are either offline or affected by turbidity. At eight a. m. today. October twenty-ninth, the government of Jamaica issued the all clear, Halloween National agencies to transition to early recovery operations and of course address immediate response options. search and rescue on assessment teens are currently conducting air assessments and field assessments, which will inform the scale of additional support required. All shelters remain open under the government’s directive that no one will be turned away. Individuals and organizations wishing to support relief and recovery kind of visit the official portal at https//supportjamaica.gov.jm This platform allows verified donations to be channeled directly to the National relief effort under the office of disaster preparedness and emergency management coordination.”