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Footage shows total destruction with the roofs and walls of buildings collapsed, trees fallen and roads blocked after Hurricane Melissa hit. On the route to Black River, two hours south of Kingston, Jamaica , debris prevented cars from getting through and isolated the town. Clips showed vehicles backed up on a road with trees having fallen down and blocking their way while there are also images of houses which have been destroyed and lying in ruins. Hurricane Melissa has left dozens dead and caused widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica. A landslide also blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter. “I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said. The full extent of the damage from the Category 5 hurricane is still unclear as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persists. “It is too early for us to say definitively,” said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister. Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica with top winds of 185mph, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects. At least 23 people have died across Haiti and 13 are missing, Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement, revising the death toll downward. Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from the southern coastal town of Petit-Goâve, where flooding collapsed dozens of homes. The number of dead and missing in Haiti often fluctuate in the early days after major natural disasters. In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off buildings, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters. “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 today, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain. In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people have been packed into shelters and more streamed in throughout the day after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dixon said 77% of the island was without power. Outages complicated assessing the damage because of “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station. “Recovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilized,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement. “Relief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.” Officials in Black River, a coastal town of approximately 5,000 people in the southwestern part of the island, pleaded for aid at a news conference Wednesday. “Catastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,” Mayor Richard Solomon said. Solomon said the local rescue infrastructure had been demolished by the storm. The hospital, police units and emergency services were inundated by floods and unable to conduct emergency operations. The storm also destroyed the facility where relief supplies were being stored. In southwest Jamaica, David Muschette, 84, sat among the rubble of his roofless house. He said he lost everything as he pointed to his wet clothes and furniture strewn across the grass while part of his roof partially blocked the road. “I need help,” he begged. The government said it hopes to reopen Jamaica’s airports as early as Thursday to ensure quick distribution of emergency relief supplies. St. Elizabeth Police Superintendent Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network that authorities have found at least four bodies in southwest Jamaica. One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, said state minister Abka Fitz-Henley. Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic.
