Oct. 31 (UPI) — The death toll from Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean stood at 40 early Friday, with at least 19 killed in Jamaica which took the brunt of the Category 5 storm packing winds of 185 mph and extreme rainfall.
Casualty numbers were likely to rise as authorities take stock and regain access to areas cut off by flooding or damage to roads and bridges.
Melissa was expected to pass close to Bermuda imminently, injecting extra moisture and heat into a separate, fast moving storm heading westerly in from the Atlantic toward New England, causing heavy rain, severe thunderstorms and squalls along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.
The main hurricane, now Category 2 — still with very high wind speeds and moving at a much accelerated 21 mph — may make one last port of call in or on Newfoundland late Friday, or first thing Saturday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was warning of high winds and potentially tonadoes in the Mid-Atlantic region and flood alerts and warnings were in place for inundations of 1 to 2 feet in at-risk shore districts from Virginia to Long Island and Connecticut.
Jamaican Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon in social media updates said eight bodies had been recovered in St. Elizabeth Parish in the southwest of the island, two in St. James Parish in the northwest and nine in Westmoreland Parish.
However, definitive totals were yet to become available despite the use of a military helicopter to search for bodies in locations currently still only accessible from the air but the government had already shifted into a damage assessment and recovery phase.
“We get a lot of reports about potential bodies. We’re not sure, they have to verify this. There are entire communities that seem to be marooned and also areas that have been flattened,” Morris Dixon told a news conference Thursday.
She said the military was, however, beginning to make headway on the ground toward cut-off areas and had begun moving humanitarian supplies into place.
Prime Minister Andew Holness said up to 90% of buildings lost their roofs in Black River, the capital of St. Elizabeth parish close to where Melissa came ashore and hospital patients had been evacuated from the town.
Most of the country was without electricity, parts of the island have been without water since Tuesday and food was also becoming hard to find.
U.N. resident coordinator for Jamaica Dennis Zulu said Jamaica had suffered devastation on an unprecedented level.
“I don’t think there’s any single soul on this island who’s not affected by Hurricane Melissa,” said Zulu.
After hitting Jamaica with full force on Tuesday, Melissa went on to wreak a trail of death and destruction all across the region, ravaging southeastern Cuba early Wednesday, where more than 735,000 people were evacuated, and the central Bahamas later the same day.
The hurricane also dumped huge volumes of rainfall on Haiti where at least 30 people including 10 children were killed in flooding when a river burst its banks in Petit Goave in the southwest of the country.
