Overview
- Melissa struck Jamaica at Category 5 strength with sustained winds near 300 km/h, the island’s most intense landfall in about 90 years, flattening homes and crippling infrastructure in western and southern parishes.
- Roughly 600,000 Jamaican households remain without power and multiple hospitals were heavily damaged, with roads blocked and rural communities cut off, complicating rescue and surveys.
- Cuban authorities evacuated more than 735,000 people and report considerable damage and widespread outages affecting millions, while maintaining no confirmed deaths so far.
- Haiti’s civil protection and the UN report at least 24 deaths, many in flood-hit Petit-Goâve, with additional people missing after torrents swept away homes.
- The storm has moved past Cuba toward the Bahamas and Bermuda, with forecasters warning of dangerous winds and coastal flooding, as the United States and United Kingdom deploy assistance and access constraints slow relief delivery.