Hurricane Melissa, the strongest recorded storm to ever hit Jamaica, made landfall on Tuesday afternoon, leaving a trail of damage and destruction overnight, especially in the western region of the island. Yesterday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that the storm had emerged from the northern coast of western Jamaica with “damaging winds, catastrophic flash flooding and life-threatening storm surge,” leaving the country with a lot to clean up. Brian Bogart, county director for the World Food Programmes’ Caribbean operations, says he has relief teams on the ground in western parts of the country, where he “expects to see the most severe devastation.” “From the images that are coming in, we see homes that have been submerged, infrastructure completely destroyed, entire communities that are really struggling just to survive at the moment,” Bogart told CTV News Channel in an interview on Wednesday from Kingston, Jamaica. “We really want to urgently get assistance to them so that they can get back on their feet as soon as possible.” Robert Collins of Winnipeg left his children to travel to the island to be the primary caregiver for his sister, who is recovering from a brain aneurism. His family’s home in eastern Jamaica suffered “significant roof damage,” but he says the greatest damage was felt by the western side of the island. “I’ve seen what happened in Montego Bay to construction projects, to agricultural projects, to tourism properties. You know Jamaica depends heavily on our agriculture and tourism, and when I see what is happening, it’s scary to think about what we’ve faced as an emerging nation,” Collins told CTV News Channel on Wednesday. According to Collins, the whole island woke up in “recovery mode” – an effort he says the country is going to need a lot of institutional support to overcome. “We are resilient people. We are proud people, and we believe that we’re going to get through this working together,” he said. Relief organizations like World Food Programmes’ are mobilizing to provide Jamaica aid, but it’s going to be “a collective effort” Bogart tells CTV. “What we’re really focused on now is trying to get food and logistics reports to enable the entire humanitarian response in coordination with the government, the UN and NGO partners,” Bogart said. He added that temporary infrastructure will be needed to enable assistance to people in need. “We’re deploying mobile warehousing, we are looking at sending generators, we’re supporting airlifts from our offices in Barbados and Panama to bring in additional support, and we’re surging teams into Jamaica to support efforts,” he said. While Jamaica continues to recover from the aftermath of the storm, the NHC reports that Hurricane Melissa is set to make landfall in eastern Cuba on Wednesday and in the Bahamas later that evening.
