Hurricane Melissa is heading for Cuba after it made landfall as a category 5 storm in Jamaica, battering the country with ferocious winds, heavy flood waters and landslides as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history.
Cuba’s president warned the country was in for a “very difficult night” as the category 4 storm headed for the island’s second-largest city, Santiago de Cuba.
“Melissa is expected to remain a powerful hurricane when it moves across Cuba, the Bahamas, and near Bermuda,” the US National Hurricane Centre said in an advisory.
In Jamaica, minister of local government Desmond McKenzie, said on Tuesday afternoon that the southwestern parish of St Elizabeth was “under water” and that at least three families were trapped in their homes in the community of Black river in western Jamaica.
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Emergency services were struggling to reach due them to the dangerous conditions, he said. He declined to confirm whether there were any deaths.
Describing the hurricane as “one of the worst experiences that [Jamaica] has ever encountered”, McKenzie said more than 530,000 people were without electricity and close to 15,000 people were in storm shelters.
“The damage to St Elizabeth is extensive, based on what we have seen. Sections of Clarendon are also is experiencing severe conditions,” he said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
“Our infrastructure has been severely compromised. St Elizabeth is the breadbasket of the country and that has taken a beating. The entire Jamaica has felt the brunt of Melissa,” he added.
He also warned that Jamaica was not out of the woods and that the system was still active.
Videos and photographs published by local newspapers painted a devastating portrait of the impact: roads transformed into raging rivers, downed power lines and trees, and roofs ripped off buildings by the power of the winds.
“Hurricane Melissa is wreaking absolute havoc on Jamaica’s breadbasket parish,” the Jamaica Observer reported from St Elizabeth in the southwest of the island.
The prime minister, Andrew Holness, posted on X on Tuesday afternoon: “Our thoughts and prayers are with our citizens in that part of the island as we give you the assurance that we will be with you throughout, mobilising support and relief.” A few hours later he officially declared the Caribbean country “a disaster area” as a result of widespread flooding, landslides and infrastructure damage.
The slow-moving colossus is the most intense hurricane to hit Jamaica since records began in 1851 and will linger over the island for hours before turning northeast.
In Portmore, a community on Jamaica’s south-eastern coast, the Mercy Corps adviser Colin Bogle said he had been woken “by a loud explosion – and everything went dark”.
“Outside, trees are being violently tossed in the wind, and the noise is relentless,” he added.
In a televised address to the nation, Miguel Díaz-Canel, the president of Cuba warned citizens the storm could be “one of the most severe – or possibly the strongest” ever to hit the island.
“We want to emphasise ... the magnitude of this event,” he said, urging Cubans not to return to their homes from shelters. Wind speeds dropped to 233km/h as the storm moved across Jamaica, making it a category 4 storm, but it was still expected to cause widespread infrastructure damage and flooding. Díaz-Canel said more than 500,000 people had been evacuated from its path.
Jamaica’s government said it had done all it could to prepare, issuing a mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas, as it warned of severe impact for the nation’s 2.8 million people.
The streets in the capital, Kingston, remained largely empty on Tuesday, with footage showing trees bent over by the force of the wind.
“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a category 5,” said Mr Holness. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”
Category 5 is the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds exceeding 250km/h. The US National Hurricane Centre reported that Melissa carried sustained wind speeds of 298km/h, with higher gusts.
“It’s a catastrophic situation expected in Jamaica,” the World Meteorological Organisation’s tropical cyclone specialist, Anne-Claire Fontan, told a Geneva press briefing. “For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure.”
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Heavy rain knocked out power for some residents in Portland, St Thomas, St Andrew, St Elizabeth and Westmoreland, including in popular tourist destinations such as Negril and Treasure Beach.
One particularly badly hit area was Manchester parish, which has faced days of torrential rain and violent winds as the storm approached.
The chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, Jonathan Porter, said Melissa would be the strongest hurricane to hit Jamaica directly in recorded history.
Landslides were reported before the storm, with officials in Jamaica cautioning that the clean-up and damage assessment would be slow. The storm entered near St Elizabeth parish in the south and was expected to exit in the north, forecasters said.
A life-threatening storm surge of up to 4m was expected across southern Jamaica, with officials concerned about the impact on some hospitals along the coastline. The health minister, Christopher Tufton, said some patients were being relocated from the ground floor to the second floor, “and [we] hope that will suffice for any surge that will take place”.
The storm is already thought to have caused seven deaths in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.
Climate scientists have said the intensification of Hurricane Melissa – with winds doubling from 112km/h to 225km/h in just a day – is probably a symptom of the rapid heating of the world’s oceans, part of the human-driven climate crisis.
After Jamaica, Melissa is forecast to cross Cuba and the Bahamas by Wednesday. – Guardian
