Nearly 50 dead after Hurricane Melissa thrashes Caribbean and approaches Bermuda

Melissa smashed into both Jamaica and Cuba with enormous force, and residents are assessing their losses and the long road to recovery.

The storm, intensified by climate change, caused severe flooding and destruction in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti. Photo / Yamil Lage, AFP

“The confirmed death toll from Hurricane Melissa is now at 19,” including nine in Westmoreland and eight in St Elizabeth, both parishes in the Caribbean island’s hard-hit west, Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon told local news outlets, including the Jamaica Gleaner.

Communications and transport access remains largely down in Jamaica and Cuba, and a comprehensive assessment of the damage could take days.

In impoverished Haiti, the country’s civil defence agency said on Thursday that the death toll had risen to 30, with 20 people injured and another 20 missing.

It said more than 1000 homes have been flooded, with about 16,000 people in shelters.

The Caribbean is reeling from Hurricane Melissa’s devastation as the death toll climbs to 50. Photo / Clarens Siffroy, AFP

In the east of the communist island of Cuba, battling its worst economic crisis in decades, people struggled through inundated streets lined with flooded and collapsed homes.

The storm smashed windows, downed power cables and mobile communications, and tore off roofs and tree branches.

Melissa “killed us, because it left us destroyed,” Felicia Correa, who lives in the La Trampa community near El Cobre, told AFP.

“We were already going through tremendous hardship. Now, of course, we are much worse off.”

Cuban authorities said about 735,000 people had been evacuated – mainly in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguin and Guantanamo.

‘Disaster area’

The United States, meanwhile, has mobilised disaster assistance response teams and urban search and rescue personnel, and the teams were now on the ground in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Bahamas, according to a US State Department official.

Teams were en route to Haiti too.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also included ideological foe Havana, saying the US is “prepared to offer immediate humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba affected by the hurricane”.

A couple of women recover their belongings after the passage of Hurricane Melissa in Rio Sevilla village, Santiago de Cuba province, Cuba. Photo / Yamil Lage, AFP

The British Government announced £2.5 million (about $5.74m) in emergency funding for the region, and also said it was chartering “limited” flights to help British nationals leave.

In Jamaica, United Nations resident co-ordinator Dennis Zulu told reporters that Melissa had brought “tremendous, unprecedented devastation of infrastructure, of property, roads, network connectivity”.

Authorities there have said confirming reports of deaths was difficult as access to the hardest-hit areas was limited, and some people were still unable to reach family and loved ones.

‘Everything is gone’

Residents rest amid the debris of a damaged house after Melissa blasted through Boca de Dos Rios village in Santiago de Cuba province, Cuba. Photo / Yamil Lage, AFP

Hurricane Melissa tied the 1935 record for the most intense storm ever to make landfall when it slammed Jamaica on Tuesday, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In Seaford Town, farmer and businessman Christopher Hacker saw his restaurant and nearby banana plantations flattened.

“Everything is gone,” he told AFP.

Such mega-storms “are a brutal reminder of the urgent need to step up climate action on all fronts”, said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell.

– Agence France-Presse