Hurricane Melissa, a record-setting storm that ripped through the Caribbean as the strongest in modern history, has left a trail of devastation across Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba, killing at least 32 people and flattening entire communities.
The storm, which sustained winds of 298 km/h (185 mph) at its peak—surpassing Hurricane Katrina—has now been downgraded but continues to sweep toward Bermuda. The scale of the destruction is only now becoming clear, with communications severed, towns cut off by mud, and tens of thousands left without power.
In Jamaica, the southwestern parish of St Elizabeth suffered the most severe impact. Towns like Black River were isolated by washed-out bridges and knee-deep mud, with residents forced to walk miles to report casualties. The town of Mandeville was described as “flattened,” with a petrol station stripped of its roof and pumps.
“I was standing in what used to be main street yesterday and I was knee-deep in mud where the road should have been,” said Dana Malcolm of the Jamaica Observer, describing the painfully slow progress through landslide-blocked roads.
Haiti, already crippled by gang violence and a humanitarian crisis, suffered the highest death toll with at least 23 lives lost—10 of them children—largely due to catastrophic flooding from the storm’s relentless rains, despite avoiding a direct hit.
In Cuba, residents of Santiago de Cuba took to the streets with machetes to clear debris, while President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged “considerable damage.” As the storm moved through the Bahamas, authorities carried out one of the largest evacuations in the country’s history, with officials urging continued vigilance as “even a weakened hurricane retains the capacity to bring serious devastation.”
Why It Matters
Hurricane Melissa, with its record-breaking intensity, illustrates a terrifying new normal for the Caribbean—a region disproportionately bearing the brunt of global warming despite contributing minimally to its causes. The destruction in Haiti is particularly grim, demonstrating how climate disasters viciously compound existing political and humanitarian crises.
The international response to this catastrophe will be a critical measure of global solidarity. It’s not enough to send aid after the fact; the world must confront the root cause (the climate emergency) before the next “storm of the century” arrives, as it inevitably will.
