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By this morning, it will be known whether Hurricane Melissa made the sharp northward turn forecasted. If so, the system would be barrelling through Jamaica. Yesterday, global weather forecasting service, AccuWeather, ominously predicted: “A dire situation is unfolding in the Caribbean as Category 5 Hurricane Melissa is forecast to … cross Jamaica like a giant buzzsaw and firehose at the same time.” Other services said Melissa would be the strongest hurricane to hit Jamaica since record-keeping began in 1851. The system has moved sluggishly along the common hurricane path towards the region for several days after it formed as a tropical storm on October 21. Over the next four days, it developed into a hurricane and by last weekend rapidly intensified into a Category 5. The National Hurricane Centre forecasts 40 inches of rain, 13 feet of storm surge and 160 mph sustained winds anticipated to cause “extensive infrastructure damage” that will cut off communities. Catastrophic is the word being used to describe the potent impact of the system that is likely to sit over Jamaica for some time. Further worrying is that the hurricane has already killed at least three people in Haiti and a fourth in the Dominican Republic, where one person is still missing. It is also expected to make landfall in Cuba before heading to the Bahamas, meaning at least five of our Caribbean neighbours will have to endure Melissa’s wrath. In some ways, Melissa’s behaviour resembles Beryl’s in June, 2024. That system looked one way for several days and then quickly became a mammoth natural disaster from which Grenada and other territories have not yet recovered. Beryl then and Melissa now should be sufficient for Caribbean governments, disaster agencies and populations to take in front with urgency. In that context, whereas the T&T Government mobilised since October 24 to repatriate willing students from The UWI Mona campus and arranged provisions for others, they must shoulder some responsibility for not absorbing the cost of emergency evacuation of students even if repayment was to be pursued later. We recognise that, with several countries in Melissa’s path and with T&T nationals likely to be spread over all those countries, it would have been unreasonable for the Government to repatriate all. But in the case of students, young people with limited support systems in the path of a slow-moving monstrous weather system, discounted airfares, we suggest, was an insufficient national response. T&T is lucky to have the capability to repatriate our vulnerable nationals. Not all countries do. Responses have ranged from organising large-scale emergency repatriations (St Kitts and Nevis) to facilitating priority return flights and providing emergency supplies (T&T) to arranging enhanced sheltering and lodging (Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize), and maintaining direct communication (Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines). That said, the Caribbean public, tuned in via internet technology like any other citizen in developed nations, is expected to also be alert to the new climate-change realities of life-threatening weather events. They, too, need to respond with alacrity to secure themselves and their loved ones in any way possible in these moments.
