{"id":105353,"date":"2025-10-30T04:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/105353\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T04:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:09:10","slug":"hurricane-melissa-brings-destruction-to-jamaica-cuba-and-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/105353\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Melissa brings destruction to Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (AP) \u2014 Hurricane Melissa<\/a> left at least dozens dead and caused widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes, toppled utility poles and water-logged furniture dominated the landscape Wednesday.<\/p>\n

A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Residents continued to evacuate from their homes in Cuba as Hurricane Melissa battered its way through the Caribbean and was expected to arrive on the island\u2019s shores. (AP video shot by: Ariel Fern\u00e1ndez, Matias Delacroix and Jordany Junior Verdieu)<\/p>\n

\u201cI never see anything like this before in all my years living here,\u201d resident Jennifer Small said. <\/p>\n

The extent of the damage from the deadly hurricane<\/a> was unclear Wednesday as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too early for us to say definitively,\u201d said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica\u2019s education minister.<\/p>\n

Melissa made landfall<\/a> Tuesday in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 185 mph (295 kph), one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes<\/a> on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects.<\/p>\n

At least 25 people have died across Haiti and 18 are missing, Haiti\u2019s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement Wednesday. Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes. At least eight are dead in Jamaica.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Defense Department has released footage of views inside Hurricane Melissa. The military said a U.S. Air Force Reserve crew from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the \u201cHurricane Hunters,\u201d flew multiple passes through Melissa on Monday to collect critical weather data for the National Hurricane Center.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was hell. All night long, it was terrible,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Forecasters expect Melissa, now a Category 2 hurricane, to bring dangerous winds, flooding and storm surge to the Bahamas overnight into Thursday.<\/p>\n

Jamaica rushes to assess the damage<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Hurricane Melissa churns across Cuba as a Category 3 storm\n <\/p>\n

AP correspondent Donna Warder reports on Hurricane Melissa.<\/p>\n

In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters Wednesday after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dixon said 77% of the island was without power.<\/p>\n

The outages complicated assessing the damage because of \u201ca total communication blackout\u201d in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica\u2019s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilized,\u201d Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement. \u201cRelief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a southwestern coastal town of approximately 5,000 people, pleaded for aid at a news conference Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cCatastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,\u201d Mayor Richard Solomon said.<\/p>\n

Solomon said the local rescue infrastructure had been demolished by the storm. The hospital, police units and emergency services were inundated by floods and unable to conduct emergency operations. <\/p>\n

Jamaican Transportation Minister Daryl Vaz said two of the island\u2019s airports will reopen Wednesday to relief flights only, with U.N. agencies and dozens of nonprofits on standby to distribute basic goods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe devastation is enormous,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need all hands on deck to recover stronger and to help those in need at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X. <\/p>\n

St. Elizabeth Police Superintendent 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. <\/p>\n

Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

Melissa devastates Haitian town<\/p>\n

Hurricane Melissa damaged more than 160 homes and destroyed 80 others in the town of Petit-Go\u00e2ve, where 10 of the 20 people killed there were children, Haiti\u2019s Civil Protection Agency said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Charly Saint-Vil, 30, said he saw bodies lying among the debris after the storm as he walked the streets of the small coastal town where he grew up. People screamed as they searched for their missing children, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have lost everything,\u201d Saint-Vil said.<\/p>\n

Although the immediate threat of the storm has passed, Saint-Vil said Petit-Go\u00e2ve\u2019s residents were living in fear about access to medicine, water and food in the coming days given the political instability in Haiti<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For now, neighbors are helping one another source necessities and find places to sleep. Saint-Vil is hosting a number of friends who lost their homes in his small apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can do, I will do it, but it\u2019s not easy because the situation is really complicated for everyone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cuba rides out the storm<\/p>\n

People in the eastern Cuban 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is what matters,\u201d 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. \u201cRepairing this costs money, a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as conditions allow, we will begin the recovery. We are ready,\u201d President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel wrote on X.<\/p>\n

The hurricane could worsen Cuba\u2019s severe economic crisis, which already has led to prolonged power blackouts along with fuel and food shortages.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s National Institute of Hydraulic Resources reported accumulated rainfall of 15 inches (38 centimeters) in Charco Redondo and 14 inches (36 centimeters) in Las Villas Reservoir.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night, Melissa had top sustained winds near 100 mph (155 kph) and was moving north-northeast at 21 mph (33 kph) according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centered about 105 miles (170 kilometers) east-northeast of the central Bahamas and about 800 miles (1,285 kilometers) southwest of Bermuda.<\/p>\n

Authorities in the Bahamas were evacuating dozens of people from the archipelago\u2019s southeast corner ahead of Melissa\u2019s arrival. By late Thursday, Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez reported from Havana, Myers from Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Sanon from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. D\u00e1nica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (AP) \u2014 Hurricane Melissa left at least dozens dead and caused widespread destruction across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[68977,66989,9887,2084,3667,64564,68971,68970,146,122,44826,68976,26001,61325,85,46,64562,68975,16632,11741,68974,238,68973,68978,68972,411,126],"class_list":["post-105353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-alexis-ramos","tag-andrew-holness","tag-central-america","tag-climate","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-cuba","tag-dana-morris-dixon","tag-daryl-vaz","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-haiti","tag-hurricane-melissa","tag-hurricanes","tag-hurricanes-and-typhoons","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jamaica","tag-jennifer-small","tag-latin-america","tag-marco-rubio","tag-miguel-daz-canel","tag-politics","tag-richard-solomon","tag-rick-thompson","tag-tropical-storm-melissa","tag-tv","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}