The death toll from Hurricane Melissa on Thursday rose to nearly 50 people, officials said, after the ferocious storm devastated Caribbean islands and was bearing down on Bermuda.
Flooding was expected to subside in the Bahamas, although high water could persist in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the US National Hurricane Center said.
The government urged residents to take precautionary measures against the still-powerful storm.
Photo: AFP
Melissa smashed into Jamaica and Cuba with enormous force, and residents were assessing their losses and the long road to recovery.
“The confirmed death toll from Hurricane Melissa is now at 19,” Jamaican Minister of Education, Youth and Information Dana Morris Dixon said.
Communications and transportation access remains largely down in Jamaica and Cuba, and comprehensive assessment of the damage could take days.
In Haiti, the country’s civil defense agency said that the death toll had risen to 30, with 20 people injured and another 20 missing.
More than 1,000 homes have been flooded, with about 16,000 people in shelters, it said.
In Cuba, people struggled through inundated streets lined with flooded and collapsed homes.
The storm smashed windows, downed power cables and mobile communications, and tore off roofs and tree branches.
Cuban authorities said about 735,000 people had been evacuated — mainly in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguin and Guantanamo.
Meanwhile, the US has mobilized disaster assistance response teams, and urban search and rescue personnel, and the teams were on the ground in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Bahamas, a US Department of State official said. Teams were en route to Haiti too.
The British government announced ￡2.5 million (US$3.3 million) in emergency funding for the region, and also said it was chartering “limited” flights to help British nationals leave.
In Jamaica, authorities said confirming deaths was difficult, as access to the hardest-hit areas was limited, and some people were still unable to reach family and loved ones.
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