Hurricane Melissa, a monstrous Category 5 beast, has torn through the Caribbean with a ferocity that’s left dozens dead and entire communities in shambles, as the Associated Press reports.
Hitting Jamaica first on Tuesday with winds howling at 185 mph, then slamming into Cuba, and leaving devastation in Haiti, this storm -- one of the fiercest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded -- has collapsed homes, blocked roads, and cut power across the region while weakening to 100 mph as it churns northeast toward the Bahamas.
Let’s rewind to Tuesday, when Melissa made its brutal debut in Jamaica, packing winds that could uproot just about anything in their path.
By Wednesday, the aftermath in places like Santa Cruz in St. Elizabeth parish was grim. Main roads were buried under landslides, streets turned to mud pits, and over 77% of the island was left in the dark with no power or communication in some areas.
More than 25,000 Jamaicans huddled in shelters, with numbers growing as roofs were ripped off homes, leaving families with nowhere to go but public refuges like a high school that itself lost part of its covering in the storm.
In Black River, a small coastal town of about 5,000, local officials begged for aid at a news conference, pointing out that floods had overwhelmed hospitals, police, and emergency services, while the storage for relief supplies was wiped out by the tempest.
Moving to Haiti, the situation was even more heart-wrenching, as flooding from Melissa claimed at least 25 lives in the southern coastal town of Petit-Goâve, where the La Digue river burst its banks and flattened dozens of homes.
Residents there were still trapped under rubble on Wednesday morning, struggling to escape heavy floodwaters with only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency on the ground to help -- an appalling lack of resources for a disaster of this scale.
Contrast this with the progressive obsession over climate conferences. Real people are drowning in mud while bureaucrats sip lattes and debate carbon credits half a world away.
In Cuba, the storm’s wrath was no less severe, striking the Santiago de Cuba region on Wednesday with such force that homes were left with collapsed walls, and the Juan Bruno Zayas Clinical Hospital was reduced to shattered glass and ruined waiting rooms.
The southwest and northwest bore the brunt of the damage, with blocked mountain roads and blown-off roofs, while 735,000 Cubans remained in shelters, and parts of Granma province, like Jiguaní, were submerged under more than 15 inches of rain.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned in a televised address, “There will be a lot of work to do. We know there will be a lot of damage.” Well, Mr. President, that’s an understatement -- let’s hope the government’s response matches the scale of this crisis, not just the rhetoric.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Melissa, though weakened to sustained winds of 100 mph, was still a menace, centered 150 miles south of the central Bahamas, moving northeast at 14 mph and growing in size with tropical storm force winds stretching nearly 200 miles from its core.
Forecasters predict up to seven feet of storm surge in the southeastern Bahamas, with the storm’s center expected to pass through later Wednesday and skirt just west of Bermuda by late Thursday—a reminder that nature doesn’t care about borders or political agendas.
As one resident, Jennifer Small, lamented, “I never see anything like this before in all my years living here.”
