Hurricane Melissa leaves recovery challenge for Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba after more than 30 killed
Traffic sped up as red lights lay among piles of debris. Once mighty trees and crumbling power lines on streets turned into rivers. Entire communities swept away by wind and floodwaters, satellite images show.
Melissa left more than 70% of Jamaica without power, Telecommunications and Transport Minister Daryl Vaz said at a press conference on Thursday.
At least 82 roads on the island were closed Thursday morning, said Robert Morgan, the country’s infrastructure minister.
“A large percentage of Jamaica’s utility facilities are on the road,” Morgan said. “Contractors cannot touch these power lines without the Jamaica Utility Company telling us it is safe to do so.”
These are just some of the scenes of devastation Jamaica woke to Thursday morning, 48 hours after Hurricane Melissa raged through the island nation, the most powerful storm in its history and one of the most powerful on record. The United Nations said the damage was at a level “never seen before.”
All three international airports have reopened, Vaz announced on Thursday.
Cuba is also calculating the cost of collapsed homes and blocked roads from the storm, with 735,000 people spending the night in shelters, and the true extent of the damage remains unclear.
The monster storm brought winds of up to 185 mph and killed at least nine people in Jamaica and 27 others in the Caribbean this week.
The storm was heading toward Bermuda on Thursday afternoon, where conditions will “deteriorate rapidly,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. update.. The storm has weakened significantly to around 105 mph, making it a still dangerous Category 2 storm, capable of inflicting significant damage. Melissa could bring an additional 1 to 2 inches of rain to parts of Hispaniola and is expected to bring 1 inch of rain to Bermuda on Thursday.
By Saturday, the storm will have lost its tropical characteristics – and its name – and become a powerful post-tropical cyclone over the North Atlantic, heading directly toward St. John’s.
But for Jamaica and Cuba, the task of providing aid to affected communities and rebuilding begins now.
This urgent humanitarian challenge prompted immediate responses from countries around the world and non-governmental organizations after more than 400,000 people in Jamaica were directly affected.
The State Department announced it would send a regional disaster response team (DART) to the region, as well as U.S.-based urban search and rescue teams.
However, one former and two current U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday that the response was delayed due to the government shutdown and the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously, the DART team would have already been on the ground in Jamaica, according to sources, but missed the opportunity to travel ahead of the storm.
US non-profit Project Dynamo is sending more than 3,000 pounds of essential aid to Jamaica in several planes, including water purification kits and medical supplies, as part of Operation Cool Runnings, a reference to the cult 1993 film.
