Hurricane Melissa is actively ripping its way through the Caribbean. The storm’s 185 mph winds and heavy rainfall are leaving islands, many once called paradise, unrecognizable due to flooding and destruction.
“I have never seen anything like this before in all my years living here,” a Jamaican resident, Jennifer Small, told the Associated Press.
“It was terrifying,” Natassia Wright, another resident, told CNN. “Hearing the wind howling outside, hearing the sea roaring, wondering what’s going to happen next, seeing trees fall – these trees have been around for ages – seeing different objects flying around in the wind. It was scary.”
Ranked as one of the strongest Atlantic storms to make landfall in recorded history, Hurricane Melissa reached category five when it hit Jamaica, according to the National Hurricane Center. According to a Haitian official, more than 20 people have died, including children, the New York Times reports. Similarly, Jamaican government sources have reportedly retrieved four bodies in St. Elizabeth Parish, an area hit hard by the storm.
“The requests for aid are immense,” Ronald Louis, a technical manager for the Municipal Civil Protection Committee, told the New York Times. “Hygiene kits, drinking water, shelters, sanitation kits, clothing, and heavy equipment to work on the river, because if nothing is done, the waters could cause the same damage again if it rains. Rain is falling intermittently, and we are proceeding with the evacuation of residents.”
Similarly, Jamaican Minister of Information Dana Morris Dixon stressed to CNN the need for heavy equipment to get to communities that are trapped in various parts of the island.
“Having heavy equipment, having crews that can come in and assist us in getting to those areas is really important,” Dixon told the outlet on Wednesday. “We have reports from other parts of Jamaica of potential deaths, but we are not able to verify it with the police because we’ve not been able to get many of our emergency teams into those communities.”
After the eye of the storm hit Jamaica, experts say Hurricane Melissa’s course increased rapidly, landing in Cuba and leaving “significant damage,” according to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Though the hurricane has reportedly been downgraded to a Category 1, intense storm surges are still expected to cause significant damage in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.
