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.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS