ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Jamaica could be dealing with its strongest hurricane ever.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Melissa barrels toward the Jamaican coast, and that barrel is pointed directly at Trelawny Parish.<\/p>\n
It’s Marsden Palmer’s hometown.<\/p>\n
Palmer is the executive chef at Mikey’s Caribbean Restaurant in Allentown.<\/p>\n
He came to the U.S. four years ago. As a boy, he survived Hurricane Gilbert, a Category 3 hurricane as it crossed his island. The storm killed 145 people and destroyed 100,000 homes.<\/p>\n
“Witnessing that was really, really terrifying,” remembered Palmer. “Because it came in the night.”<\/p>\n
Palmer says he still has dozens of relatives in Jamaica in the direct path of Hurricane Melissa, including his father and his mother.<\/p>\n
“I’m feeling good. I’m preparing myself. Taking all the necessary precautions,” said Donna Palmer, from Jamaica, while she FaceTimed with her son at his restaurant.<\/p>\n
The projected track will take the storm west of the capital city of Kingston, where the city’s mayor expects storm surge of up to 13 feet.<\/p>\n
“We have never had a Cat 4 or 5 before. It’s going to be huge,” said Mayor Andrew Swaby.<\/p>\n
Kingston will avert a direct hit, but the storm is expected to unleash flash flooding and mudslides through Central Jamaica and over Trelawny Parish, where Palmer’s family is preparing and praying.<\/p>\n
“To be as safe as possible and just pray that we get through this one,” Marsden Palmer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Jamaica could be dealing with its strongest hurricane ever. Hurricane Melissa barrels toward the Jamaican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154,805,1133],"class_list":["post-17104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-lehighvalley","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}