{"id":152849,"date":"2025-10-30T06:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T06:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/152849\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T06:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T06:50:11","slug":"hurricane-melissa-leaves-dozens-dead-amid-destruction-in-cuba-haiti-and-jamaica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/152849\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Melissa leaves dozens dead amid destruction in Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Melissa left at least dozens dead amid widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes, toppled utility poles and water-logged furniture dominated the landscape.<\/p>\n

A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica\u2019s St Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings.<\/p>\n

\"PartsParts of the roof of St Elizabeth Technical High School are missing in Santa Cruz, Jamaica, after Hurricane Melissa passed (Matias Delacroix\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never see anything like this before in all my years living here,\u201d resident Jennifer Small said.<\/p>\n

The extent of the damage from the deadly hurricane was unclear as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too early for us to say definitively,\u201d said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica\u2019s education minister.<\/p>\n

Melissa made landfall on Tuesday in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 185 mph (295 kph), one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects.<\/p>\n

At least 25 people have died across Haiti and 18 are missing, Haiti\u2019s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes.<\/p>\n

At least eight are dead in Jamaica.<\/p>\n

In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off buildings on Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the south-west and north-west.<\/p>\n

Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.<\/p>\n

\"AA woman flees a community in Santiago de Cuba before the arrival of Hurricane Melissa (Ramon Espinosa\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was hell. All night long, it was terrible,\u201d said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba.<\/p>\n

The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out on Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.<\/p>\n

Forecasters expect Melissa, now a Category 1 hurricane, to bring dangerous winds, flooding and storm surge to the Bahamas on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Jamaica rushes to assess the damage<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters on Wednesday after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless.<\/p>\n

Ms Dixon said 77% of the island was without power.<\/p>\n

The outages complicated assessing the damage because of \u201ca total communication blackout\u201d in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica\u2019s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilised,\u201d Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cRelief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a south-western coastal town of approximately 5,000 people, pleaded for aid at a news conference on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople walk along a road during the passing of Hurricane Melissa in Rocky Point, Jamaica (Matias Delacroix\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cCatastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,\u201d mayor Richard Solomon said.<\/p>\n

Mr Solomon said the local rescue infrastructure had been demolished by the storm.<\/p>\n

The hospital, police units and emergency services were inundated by floods and unable to conduct emergency operations.<\/p>\n

Jamaican transportation minister Daryl Vaz said two of the island\u2019s airports will reopen Wednesday to relief flights only, with UN agencies and dozens of non-profits on standby to distribute basic goods.<\/p>\n

The US is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, secretary of state Marco Rubio announced on X.<\/p>\n

St Elizabeth Police Superintendent Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network on Wednesday that authorities have found at least four bodies in south-west Jamaica.<\/p>\n

One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told Nationwide News Network.<\/p>\n

Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Melissa devastates Haitian town<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hurricane Melissa damaged more than 160 homes and destroyed 80 others in the town of Petit-Goave, where 10 of the 20 people killed there were children, Haiti\u2019s Civil Protection Agency said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"AA man walks in the rain before the arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Canizo, a village in Santiago de Cuba (Ramon Espinosa\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

Lawyer Charly Saint-Vil, 30, said he saw bodies lying among the debris after the storm as he walked the streets of the small coastal town where he grew up.<\/p>\n

People screamed as they searched for their missing children, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have lost everything,\u201d Mr Saint-Vil said.<\/p>\n

Although the immediate threat of the storm has passed, Mr Saint-Vil said Petit-Goave\u2019s residents were living in fear about access to medicine, water and food in the coming days given the political instability in Haiti.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For now, neighbors are helping one another source necessities and find places to sleep.<\/p>\n

Mr Saint-Vil is hosting a number of friends who lost their homes in his small apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can do, I will do it, but it\u2019s not easy because the situation is really complicated for everyone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Cuba rides out the storm<\/strong><\/p>\n

People in the eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba began clearing debris around the collapsed walls of their homes on Wednesday after Melissa made landfall in the region hours earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is what matters,\u201d Alexis Ramos, a 54-year-old fisherman, said as he surveyed his destroyed home and shielded himself from the intermittent rain with a yellow raincoat.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepairing this costs money, a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CubaA man wades through floodwaters with his dog and belongings from his home flooded by Hurricane Melissa in Santiago de Cuba (Ramon Espinosa\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

Local media showed images of the Juan Bruno Zayas Clinical Hospital with severe damage: glass scattered across the floor, waiting rooms in ruins and masonry walls crumpled on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as conditions allow, we will begin the recovery. We are ready,\u201d President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel wrote on X.<\/p>\n

The hurricane could worsen Cuba\u2019s severe economic crisis, which already has led to prolonged power blackouts along with fuel and food shortages.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s National Institute of Hydraulic Resources reported accumulated rainfall of 15 inches (38 centimeters) in Charco Redondo and 14 inches (36 centimeters) in Las Villas Reservoir.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday evening, Melissa had top sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph) and was moving north-east at 16 mph (26 kph) according to the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.<\/p>\n

The hurricane was centred about 80 miles (135 kilometres) south-east of the central Bahamas.<\/p>\n

Authorities in the Bahamas were evacuating dozens of people from the archipelago\u2019s southeast corner ahead of Melissa\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n

Melissa\u2019s centre is forecast to move through the south-eastern Bahamas later Wednesday, generating up to seven feet (two meters) of storm surge in the area.<\/p>\n

By late Thursday, Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hurricane Melissa left at least dozens dead amid widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-152849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115461792098416352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}