In the north coast parish of St Ann, almost all residents are without power — and many of them woke up without a roof over their heads after Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica, downing trees, utility poles and anything else in its path.
Fisherman George “Larry” Brown of the community of Priory said that the morning was quiet on the day of the storm.
“Just a little rain,” the 68-year-old said.
Photo: AFP
However, by 5pm on Tuesday, the rain and wind gusts grew heavy and soon his roof peeled away, he said.
“I just heard a sound, and it just started to tear off,” Brown said.
He described Melissa as the worst storm he has ever experienced.
Photo: Satellite image 2025 Vantor / Handout via Reuters
Hurricane Melissa smashed into Jamaica as a ferocious top-level storm, with sustained winds peaking at 298kph while drenching the Caribbean nation with torrential rain.
“Gilbert is no match to this,” Brown said, referring to the 1988 hurricane referred to by many Jamaicans as a benchmark for devastation.
Hurricane Melissa tied the 1935 record for the most intense storm ever to make landfall, according to an analysis of meteorological data by Agence France-Presse — on a par with a hurricane that devastated the Florida Keys 90 years ago.
Brown’s neighbor Kayan Davis, a mother of three who said her roof lifted off sometime after 11pm, said she has been left temporarily homeless.
“I have no where to sleep... I am going to have to contact the authorities,” Davis said.
Marvin Thomas, another resident of Priory, suffered the same fate when a tree fell on his home at about 8pm.
“The tree dropped ... and the housetop started to demolish,” he said. “I had to run out and go to a friend’s home.”
The hurricane also brought extensive damage to infrastructure across Trelawny, including William Knibb High School, the alma mater of legendary Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, Trelawny Police Chief Velonique Campbell said.
Campbell and a team of 30 officers were seen with machetes and chainsaws clearing blocked roadways across the parish.
“We noticed that quite a few trees have been displaced in the main road and we wanted to ensure that the main road is kept clear as there will be aid and other supplies coming in,” Campbell said.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS