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A woman salvages belongings from the rubble of her home after it collapsed during Hurricane Melissa’s passage through Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Photo: AFP
SANTA CRUZ, ECUADOR:
A demolished church, roofs blown off homes, shattered windows and debris-strewn, impassable roads: Hurricane Melissa dealt a direct hit to Jamaica’s southwestern coastal communities that face a long haul picking up the pieces.
“It has been devastating,” officer Warrell Nicholson told AFP by phone from the Black River police station, a building that was damaged but has still become something of a refuge for people seeking shelter.
Footage of the area shows felled trees, smashed cars, downed power lines and ruined homes — a portrait of wreckage that is only starting to come clear as assessment is hampered by a lack of power and communications across the Caribbean island.
Hurricane Melissa smashed into Jamaica as a ferocious top-level storm, whose sustained winds peaked at 185 miles (295 kilometers) per hour while drenching the nation with torrential, life-threatening rain. A little up the coast from Black River, Andrew Houston Moncure took shelter with his wife and 20-month-old son in a lower level of the luxury hotel he owns in Bluefields.
It’s far from his first hurricane — but “it’s never been this bad,” he told AFP.
At one point the family took pillows and blankets into the shower to put as many walls between themselves and the brutal weather as possible.
