Flooding from Hurricane Melissa killed 25 people in Haiti while the storm still churned across Cuba on Wednesday after leaving Jamaica with widespread damage and power outages, officials said.
Jean Bertrand Subreme, mayor of the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goave, said 25 people died after La Digue river burst its banks and flooded nearby homes.
Dozens of homes collapsed and people were still trapped under rubble as of Wednesday morning, he said.
“I am overwhelmed by the situation,” he said as he pleaded with the government to help rescue victims.
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Only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency was in the area, with residents struggling to evacuate amid heavy floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Melissa in recent days.
In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters on Wednesday, hours after Melissa made landfall as a catastrophic Category 5 storm with top winds of almost 300km/h, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record.
People kept streaming into the shelters throughout the day after the storm ripped off the roofs of their homes and left them temporarily homeless.
“It’s not going to be an easy road, Jamaica,” said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council.
Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister, said 77 per cent of the island was without power on Wednesday but the water systems were not greatly affected.
At least one death was reported in the island nation’s west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told local radio station Nationwide News Network.
Officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and rooves blown off in Cuba on Wednesday, with the most destruction concentrated in the south west and north west.
Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters in eastern Cuba.
“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 on Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.
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Parts of Granma province, especially the municipal capital Jiguani, were “under water”, said governor Yanetsy Terry Gutierrez.
More than 40cm of rain was reported in Jiguani’s settlement of Charco Redondo.
Hurricane Melissa had top sustained winds of 160km/h, a Category 2 storm, and was moving north east at 14mph, according to the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
The hurricane was centred about 240km south of the central Bahamas.
Melissa was forecast to continue weakening as it crossed Cuba but remain strong as it moves across the south-eastern or central Bahamas later on Wednesday.
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It was expected to make its way late on Thursday near or to the west of Bermuda.
Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands were also braced for its effects.
The storm was expected to generate a surge of up to 3.6m in the region and drop up to 51cm of rain in parts of eastern Cuba.
Intense rain could cause life-threatening flooding with numerous landslides, US forecasters said.
The hurricane could worsen Cuba’s severe economic crisis, which has already led to prolonged power blackouts, as well as fuel and food shortages.
“There will be a lot of work to do. We know there will be a lot of damage,” Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a televised address. He urged the population not to underestimate the power of Melissa, which is “the strongest ever to hit national territory”.
Jamaican officials reported complications in assessing the damage, while the National Hurricane Centre said the local government had lifted the tropical storm warning.
“There’s a total communication blackout on that side,” Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network.
Extensive damage was reported in parts of Clarendon in the south and in the south-western parish of St Elizabeth, which was “under water”, said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council.
The storm damaged four hospitals and left one without power, forcing officials to evacuate 75 patients, Mr McKenzie said.
Santa Cruz town in St Elizabeth parish was devastated.
A landslide blocked main roads, streets were reduced to mud pits, and residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings.
Winds ripped off part of the roof at St Elizabeth Technical High School, a designated public shelter.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before in all my years living here,” said one resident, Jennifer Small.
“The entire hillside came down last night,” said another, Robert James.
The government said it hopes to reopen all of Jamaica’s airports as early as Thursday to ensure quick distribution of emergency relief supplies.
The US government said it was deploying a disaster response team and search and rescue personnel to the region.
And the State Department said non-emergency personnel and family members of US government employees were authorised to leave Jamaica because of the storm’s impact. – AP
