29.10.2025
Hurricane Melissa left dozens dead and widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes, toppled utility poles and water-logged furniture dominated the landscape Wednesday.
A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Winds ripped off part of the roof at a high school, a designated public shelter.
“I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.
Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica as a catastrophic Category 5 storm 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.
In Haiti, flooding from Melissa killed at least 25 people in the southern coastal town of Petit-Goâve, its mayor told The Associated Press. Mayor Jean Bertrand Subrème said dozens of homes collapsed when La Digue river burst its banks and people were still trapped under rubble Wednesday morning. Only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency was in the area as residents struggled to evacuate amid heavy floodwaters.
Officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off in Cuba on Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.
“That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.
In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters Wednesday and more streamed in throughout the day after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless.
Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister, said that 77 percent of the island was without power Wednesday.
Jamaican officials reported complications in assessing the damage because of outages, noting “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network.
Wednesday afternoon, Melissa had top sustained winds of 155 kph and was moving northeast at 22 kph according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centered about 245 kilometers south of the central Bahamas. AP
Battered Island...Hurricane Melissa makes landfall in Jamaican