KINGSTON: Hurricane Beryl thrashed Jamaica with heavy winds and rain on Wednesday, killing at least one person after forging a destructive, water-soaked path across smaller Caribbean islands over the past couple days.
The death toll from the powerful Category 4 hurricane climbed to at least 10, but it is widely expected to rise further as communications come back online across drenched islands damaged by flooding and deadly winds.
In Jamaica, Beryl’s eyewall skirted the island’s southern coast, pummeling communities as emergency groups rushed to evacuate people from flood-prone areas.
“It’s terrible. Everything’s gone. I’m in my house and scared,” said Amoy Wellington, a 51-year-old cashier who lives in Top Hill, a rural farming community in Jamaica’s southern St. Elizabeth parish. “It’s a disaster.”
A woman died in Jamaica’s Hanover parish after a tree fell on her home, Richard Thompson, acting director general at Jamaica’s disaster agency said in an interview on local news.
Nearly a thousand Jamaicans were in shelters by Wednesday evening, Thompson added.
The island’s main airports were closed and streets were mostly empty after Prime Minister Andrew Holness issued a nationwide curfew for Wednesday.
“We can do as much as we can do, as (is) humanly possible, and we leave the rest in the hands of God,” Holness said earlier on Wednesday, urging residents in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
The loss of life and damage wrought by Beryl underscores the consequences of a warmer Atlantic Ocean, which scientists cite as a telltale sign of human-caused climate change fueling extreme weather that differs from past experience.
Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, one of the hardest-hit areas in the eastern Caribbean, said in a radio interview that the country’s Union Island was “flattened” by Beryl.
“Everybody is homeless … It is going to be a Herculean effort to rebuild.”
Speaking to state media, Nerissa Gittens-McMillan, permanent secretary at St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ agriculture ministry, warned of possible food shortages after 50% of the country’s plantain and banana crops were lost, with significant losses also to root crops and vegetables.
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