It warned of possible coastal flooding as the storm accelerated north-eastward.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the Bahamas have since lifted hurricane warnings for the central and southern islands, as well as for the Turks and Caicos. <\/p>\n
The country’s Minister of State for Disaster Risk Management, Leon Lundy, urged residents to remain vigilant, saying: “Even a weakened hurricane retains the capacity to bring serious devastation.”<\/p>\n
Nearly 1,500 people were evacuated from vulnerable areas in what officials described as one of the largest operations in Bahamian history. <\/p>\n
While flooding has disrupted parts of the archipelago, the ministry of tourism said the majority of the country – including Nassau, Freeport, Eleuthera and the Abacos – remained largely unaffected and open to visitors.<\/p>\n
Across the wider Caribbean, Melissa’s powerful winds have torn apart homes and buildings, uprooted trees and left tens of thousands without power. <\/p>\n
In Cuba, residents of the country’s second-largest city Santiago de Cuba worked with machetes to clear streets buried in debris. President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel said the hurricane had caused “considerable damage” but did not provide a casualty figure.<\/p>\n
In Jamaica, the impact was most severe in the southwestern parish of St Elizabeth, where knee-deep mud and washed-out bridges left towns such as Black River cut off. On the road west out of the capital Kingston we saw minimal damage – some structures torn down, trees strewn across roads and gardens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It warned of possible coastal flooding as the storm accelerated north-eastward. Authorities in the Bahamas have since lifted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-234154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}