Jamaica: IFRC launches emergency appeal in response to Hurricane Melissa • FRANCE 24 English

Jamaica: IFRC launches emergency appeal in response to Hurricane Melissa • FRANCE 24 English

With us, we concentrate on Hurricane Melissa and its after effects. The rumble of large machinery, the wide of chainsaws, the chopping of machetes echoing through communities across the northern Caribbean this Thursday as they dug themselves out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and assess the damage left by the catastrophic storm. In Jamaica, the recovery has begun among shellshock communities. Some are still underwater, all accounting the cost of the biggest storm to hit the island since records began. Cuba too has been badly affected. The city of Santiago de Kuba was directly in the path of the hurricane which by the time it reached Cuba had reduced from category 5 to category 3 but nonetheless still caused widespread damage as you can see as it cut its way across the island moving on towards the Bahamas. Humanitarian aid for Jamaica has been pledged with the UK government promising around €3 million euros to help. Yinka here at France 24 has a close-up look at the situation. Her report starts in Jamaica’s Black River District where most roofs of homes have been ripped off by winds of up to 300 km hour. This is the impact of the strongest storm to hit the planet this year. Homes without roofs, others barely left standing, many destroyed altogether. On the ground, the scale of the devastation is clear as residents begin the painful task of picking up the pieces. Wish I could explain the pain. The pain, don’t know, but it just like your heart stomach just burst. The hurricane forced some to contemplate making unthinkable choices. If we had stayed, we’d have died because I have one, two, three, and the baby and their little girl. Thinking about it, had to choose one would be nice. Authorities say 90% of roofs in the coastal community of Black River have been destroyed. Hardly any left standing in the city of Montego Bay 2. A massive cleanup is now underway, largely led by residents themselves. 77year-old Alfred Hines wades barefoot through thick mud and debris, grateful just to be alive. When the water rise and me realize say well either get serious me try make me escape. At one stage I see the water at no waste and about 10 minutes time I see it around me neck here and I make my ex. Alfred is one of an estimated 400,000 people affected by hurricane Melissa. More than 25,000 remain crowded into shelters across western Jamaica with 72% of the island still without power and only a third of mobile phone networks back online. Let’s get more and bring in Thomas Odell Longa from the International Federation of the Red Cross. Thomas, thank you for joining us. The images in the report, heartbreaking. The testimony from people affected by this, it really does make you feel incredibly sad for the people in Jamaica and the people affected across the Caribbean. And I’m wondering your s your organization at times like this does such great work. What can you do? What’s underway? Give us a sense of what hope people have there. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me tonight. But the situation as as you correctly pointed out also in the footage that you shown, it’s it’s really catastrophic. We are talking about very severe damages to infrastructure, even hospitals, talking about schools, bridges, roads. So of of course the situation is very complicated. Now, if you’re talking about hope, I would say that the first thing to highlight is that the anticipatory action, the early warning system saved lives. And we saw it in these days because the fact that the Red Cross of course together with other organization local authorities were able to evacuate people and put them far from danger was was very important and if you look at the death to all I think this is a good news. Now reality is that uh time for recovery it’s uh it’s already started. Of course, some areas are still hard to reach, but humanitarian aid is coming when the airport will be reopened again. Uh we already have a couple of cargos ready to come from Panama directly to Jamaica. And again come speaking about hope anticipatory action again save lives were were able to preposition stocks in the weeks and month before to train more than 400 volunteers that were able to serve their communities before during and now in emergency mode. It’s such a difficult thing to to get your head around to really understand from afar to be in the position that those people are in right now. Many of them have lost their homes. They’re happy and rejoicing that they’ve still got their families. And it is remarkable that the death toll has been so low. But these people have so little. How does that rebuilding process begin? And once again, I’ll say you’re here and you’re talking to us. So this is no way blaming you because you’re doing great work to try to help them. Who else needs to get involved? Clearly governments need to. Clearly international organizations need to to to actually get the supplies there and the money there that they need to rebuild. Well, absolutely. The reality here is that few minutes or few hours or few days in this case of a storm will completely destroy life of people because if it’s true that uh many people will were safe with shelters and so on. It’s also true that to rebuild their own life, their own livelihoods, their own normaly will take months if not years. And we have also to remember that Jamaica as well as other countries in the area were eat less than two years ago by hurricane burial. So some of those communities were on their knees. They were trying to stand up and again another hurricane arrived. So here it’s really critical to have international solidarity. This is also our why our organization launched actually yesterday 19 million Swiss Frank emergency appeal to assist,000 people only in Jamaica. Other appeals will come for Kuba and the other affected countries. Reality here is that it’s a team effort. It’s not a one organization. one institution who can do the work and it will take time. We’re looking at a I would say at a marathon not as a sprint because needs are already huge damages we can see from this footage but the reality is that the clear the clearer picture will come in the next hours and days and sadly could be way worse indeed I mean the the death toll as high as 52 some reports are saying clear at this stage new things will come to light and let’s hope that there are no more uh deaths to be recorded but certainly the damage Thomas as you’ve been speaking about it is massive and trying to reconstruct amid all of that with all that around is incredibly difficult. How do you begin helping people in that sense? Where do you start? Well, you start from life-saving items. I mean, I know that that is kind of counterintuitive when you see a lot of water around, but water and clean water is very very important and very difficult to find in this kind of situation. So bringing water, bringing food, bringing hygien kits, bringing um I mean uh tarpoolins, blankets, all these kind of let’s say uh lifesaving items that you know in the first you need in first emergency phase then in parallel you need to work immediately and actually we started before the storm uh arrived the hurricane arrived on mental and psychological support we had volunteers and staff were trained in what we called the psychological first aid because people again on the on their knees are they have of course huge fear huge concerns and working on mental health since the beginning is really important and then the recovery phase needs to start immediately after so I would say in the next coming weeks and the recovery phase as we saw in Bahamas in Bangladesh in other countries of the world needs must have a part of uh again of creating a safer safe space working on reaction replenishing all the preposition stocks because we know sadly by experience that this kind of arrogance will come back hopefully not at this level of severity and communities needs to be prepared. Speed of the essence but of course it needs to be directed in the right ways and that’s what you’re about Thomas. So thank you very much indeed for giving us that sense uh of the hope that the people of Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean can have in the wake of what happened with hurricane uh Melissa. Thomas Odellonga is from the international federation of the Red Cross. Thank you sir as always for joining us here in France 24. We appreciate your time and good luck to you and all your team working so hard to help people there stricken by Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean.

Hurricane Melissa smashed into Jamaica as a ferocious top-level storm, with sustained winds peaking at nearly 300 km per hour while drenching the nation with torrential rain. Melissa tied the 1935 record for the most intense storm ever to make landfall, according to an AFP analysis of meteorological data. The IFRC has launched an emergency appeal to assist 180,000 people affected by the storm in Jamaica over the next 24 months.
#Jamaica #Melissa #Hurricane

🔔 Subscribe to France 24 now: https://f24.my/YTen
🔴 LIVE – Watch FRANCE 24 English 24/7 here: https://f24.my/YTliveEN

🌍 Read the latest International News and Top Stories: https://www.france24.com/en/

Like us on Facebook: https://f24.my/FBen
Follow us on X: https://f24.my/Xen
Bluesky: https://f24.my/BSen and Threads: https://f24.my/THen
Browse the news in pictures on Instagram: https://f24.my/IGen
Discover our TikTok videos: https://f24.my/TKen
Get the latest top stories on Telegram: https://f24.my/TGen