Hurricane Melissa hits Jamaica with record 185 mph winds, heads for Cuba; widespread flooding and mass evacuations underway. Photo: X.
Hurricane Melissa is moving towards Cuba’s second-largest city with the force of a powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday, hours after making landfall in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever cyclone on record to hit that Caribbean island nation.
Melissa roared ashore near Jamaica’s southwestern town of New Hope, packing sustained winds of up to 185 mph (295 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, well above the minimum 157 mph (252 kph) wind speed of a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
In southwestern Jamaica, the parish of St. Elizabeth was left “underwater,” an official said, with more than 500,000 residents without power.
“The reports that we have had so far would include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property as well, and damage to our road infrastructure,” Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on CNN after the storm had passed.
Holness said the government had not received any confirmed storm-related fatalities, but given the strength of the hurricane and the extent of the damage, “we are expecting that there would be some loss of life.”
Melissa’s winds subsided to 145 mph (233 kph), the NHC said, as the storm drifted past the mountainous island, lashing highland communities vulnerable to landslides and flooding.
The hurricane was forecast to curve to the northeast on a trajectory toward Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-most populous city.
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“We should already be feeling its main influence this afternoon and evening,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a message published in state newspaper Granma, calling on citizens to heed evacuation orders.
“There will be a lot of work to do. We know that this cyclone will cause significant damage.”
Cuban authorities said some 500,000 people were ordered to move to higher ground. In the Bahamas, next in Melissa’s path to the northeast, the government ordered evacuations of residents in southern portions of that archipelago.
Farther to the east, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic had faced days of torrential downpours leading to at least four deaths, authorities there said.
Local media reported at least three deaths in Jamaica during storm preparations, and a disaster coordinator suffered a stroke in the onset of the storm and was rushed to hospital. Late Tuesday, many areas remained cut off.
No stranger to hurricanes, Jamaica had never before beenknown to take a direct hit from a Category 4 or 5 storm, and the government called for foreign aid even as it prepared for Melissa’s arrival.
Meteorologists at AccuWeather said Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988 – the last major storm to make landfall in Jamaica.
“It’s a catastrophic situation,” the World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan told a press briefing, warning of storm surges up to 4 meters high. “For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure.”
Colin Bogle, an adviser to aid group Mercy Corps in Portmore, near Jamaica’s capital of Kingston, said he had heard a loud explosion in the morning before everything went dark. Sheltering with his grandmother, he heard relentless noise and saw trees violently tossed in the wind.
“People are scared. Memories of Hurricane Gilbert run deep, and there is frustration that Jamaica continues to face the worst consequences of a climate crisis we did not cause,” he said.
Scientists warn that storms are intensifying faster with greater frequency as a result of warming ocean waters. Many Caribbean leaders have called on wealthy, heavy-polluting nations to provide reparations in the form of aid or debt relief to tropical island countries.
Melissa’s size and strength ballooned as it churned over unusually tepid Caribbean waters, but forecasters warned that its slow movement could prove particularly destructive.
Food aid will be critical, Bogle said, as well as tools, vehicle parts and seeds for farmers. Like last year’s devastating Hurricane Beryl, Melissa crossed over some of Jamaica’s most productive agricultural zones.
On Monday, Holness said the government had an emergency budget of $33 million and insurance and credit provisions for damage a little greater than Beryl.
Also Read: Hurricane Melissa Slams Jamaica, Eye Of The Storm Now Racing Menacingly Toward Cuba
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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