Hurricane Melissa left dozens dead and widespread destruction across Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti on Wednesday, knocking out power and forcing residents from their homes in inundated towns.
A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter.
“I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.
The extent of the damage from the deadly Category 5 hurricane was unclear Wednesday as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted.
At least 25 people have died across Haiti and 18 are missing, Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement, revising the death toll downward Wednesday. Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes.
“I am overwhelmed by the situation,” Jean Bertrand Subreme, mayor of the southern Haiti coastal town of Petit-Goave, said as he pleaded with the government to help rescue victims.
In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off buildings Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.
“That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.
Melissa crossed Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane, but has since been downgraded to Category 2.
Wednesday afternoon, Melissa had top sustained winds of 150 km/h and was moving northeast at 26 km/h according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centred about 135 kilometres southeast of the central Bahamas.
Authorities in the Bahamas were evacuating dozens of people from the archipelago’s southeast corner ahead of Melissa’s arrival.
Melissa’s centre is forecast to move through southeastern Bahamas later Wednesday, generating up to two metres of storm surge in the area. By late Thursday, Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda.
Canadians warned about travel to region
The Canadian government is advising Canadians to avoid all travel to several parts of the affected region including:
Jamaica. Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Holguin and Las Tunas in Cuba. Haiti.
It is advising Canadians to avoid all non-essential travel to:
Southeastern and central Bahamas.Turks and Caicos Islands.Bermuda.
Any Canadians who need emergency assistance can contact the Emergency Watch and Response Centre 24 hours a day, including through the dedicated email address melissa.sos@international.gc.ca.
WATCH | The aftermath of Melissa in Jamaica:
Hurricane Melissa left infrastructure ‘severely compromised,’ say Jamaican officials
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category 3 storm after pummelling Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. More than 500,000 residents were left without power in Jamaica, as officials reported that most of the island experienced downed trees, power lines and extensive flooding.
In Jamaica, where at least eight deaths were being blamed on the storm, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters Wednesday and more streamed in throughout the day after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dixon said 77 per cent of the island was without power.
The outages complicated assessing the damage because of “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.
“Recovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilized,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement. “Relief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.”
Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a coastal town of approximately 5,000 people in the southwestern part of the island, pleaded for aid at a news conference Wednesday.
“Catastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,” Mayor Richard Solomon said.
WATCH | The conditions that fuelled Melissa:
Hurricane Melissa: a case study in a changing hurricane era
Hurricane Melissa’s Category 5 winds tore into western Jamaica Tuesday morning, marking one of the most powerful Atlantic landfalls ever recorded. CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe looks at how Melissa may be part of a new hurricane era: storms fuelled by record-warm seas and slowed by a shifting jet stream.’It’s not going to be an easy road’
“It’s not going to be an easy road, Jamaica,” said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chair of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council.
St. Elizabeth police Supt. Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network on Wednesday that authorities have found at least four bodies in southwest Jamaica.
One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told Nationwide News Network.
The government earlier said it hopes to reopen all of Jamaica’s airports as early as Thursday to ensure the quick distribution of emergency relief supplies.
Residents stand in a flooded street, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, in Santiago, Cuba, on Wednesday. (Norlys Perez/Reuters)
The hurricane could worsen Cuba’s severe economic crisis, which already has led to prolonged power blackouts, fuel shortages and food shortages.
People in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba began clearing debris around the collapsed walls of their homes Wednesday after Melissa made landfall in the region hours earlier.
“Life is what matters,” Alexis Ramos, a 54-year-old fisherman, said as he surveyed his destroyed home and shielded himself from the intermittent rain with a yellow raincoat. “Repairing this costs money, a lot of money.”
Local media showed images of the Juan Bruno Zayas Clinical Hospital with severe damage: glass scattered across the floor, waiting rooms in ruins and masonry walls crumpled on the ground.
WATCH | Scenes from Jamaica after the storm:
See the impact of Hurricane Melissa
Hurricane Melissa hammered parts of Jamaica before slamming into Cuba, leading to widespread damage, power outages and, in some areas, dangerous flooding.
The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wedmesday on X. He said that government officials were co-ordinating with leadership in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.
The current U.S. administration in June reinstated an economic embargo on Cuba and bans tourism to the the country.