Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record to make landfall in the Caribbean, brought with it winds of up to 185mph when it hit the island earlier this week.

The Red Cross described it as a “disaster of unprecedented catastrophe”.

Melissa ravaged through Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

It weakened by the time it reached Cuba on Wednesday morning but still brought devastation – with houses collapsed and roads blocked.

A statement from the government of Jamaica said it was “deeply saddened to confirm 28 fatalities associated with the passage of Hurricane Melissa”.

It went on: “We extend heartfelt condolences to the families, friends, and communities mourning their loved ones.”

Eyewitness: ‘Send help’ – the desperate pleas from Hurricane Melissa survivors

The confirmation came as the first British repatriation flight was setting off from the island on Saturday evening local time.

The flight, chartered by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, was for those “unable to leave Jamaica on commercial routes”.

Essential relief supplies are now rolling into some of the hardest hit areas.

The UK government is mobilising an additional £5m in emergency humanitarian funding – on top of £2.5m announced earlier this week – to support the region’s recovery.

This new funding will enable the UK to send humanitarian supplies – including more than 3,000 shelter kits and over 1,500 solar-powered lanterns to help those whose homes have been damaged and those without power.

Read more:

Before and after images show hurricane’s destruction

Do we need new ‘category 6’ for most extreme storms?

The UK is working with the World Food Programme and Red Cross, to ensure emergency relief reaches those who need it most.

At least 25 people died in the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goave after the La Digue river burst its banks as a result of the hurricane, according to the town’s mayor Jean Bertrand Subreme.

(c) Sky News 2025: Hurricane Melissa leaves 28 dead after tearing through Jamaica

CNN

By Mitchell McCluskey, CNN Meteorologist Briana Waxman and Karina Tsui

(CNN) — Hurricane Melissa brought devastation and death to the Caribbean as it tore through the region as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in more than 150 years.

Torrential downpours and forceful winds unleashed widespread destruction along the storm’s path in Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas. At least 30 people have died, though the full toll of the catastrophic storm may take days or weeks to be determined.

As the hurricane headed toward Bermuda early Thursday, emergency officials in countries along Melissa’s path have begun to pick up the pieces – clearing roads to reach isolated communities in need of relief.

Andrew Holness, the prime minister of Jamaica, traveled to some of the hardest-hit areas of the island nation Wednesday to survey the significant damage caused by punishing winds and widespread flooding.

“Despite the difficulties, the Jamaican spirit shines through as a strong reminder that we are a resilient nation with the capacity to triumph over adversity,” he wrote on social media.

Path of destruction

In the Caribbean, hotter-than-average waters paired with minimally disruptive winds higher in the atmosphere to create the perfect fuel and prime conditions for Melissa to strengthen.

Melissa rapidly intensified, jumping from a 70 mph tropical storm on Saturday morning to a 140 mph Category 4 hurricane Sunday morning.

By Tuesday, Melissa had morphed into a high-end Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, tying it with four other hurricanes as the second-strongest storm recorded in the Atlantic since records began in 1851.

As it headed toward Jamaica, where it slammed into the coast as a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned it expected the situation to be “catastrophic.”

“For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure,” WMO tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan said.

Overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, it crossed into eastern Cuba, still a formidable Category 3 hurricane by the time it made landfall in the province of Santiago de Cuba.

By the time it reached the Bahamas on Wednesday, Hurricane Melissa had been downgraded to a Category 1, but its broad wind field continued to drive torrential flooding rain, damaging winds and dangerous storm surge at the coast.

More than 735,000 people were evacuated in Cuba as Melissa approached, according to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, while in the Bahamas, preliminary estimates show 1,485 residents were evacuated before all flights were suspended ahead of the approaching storm.

Evacuation orders were also issued for six islands in the Bahamas.

Other countries, including the Dominican Republic and Haiti, also felt the cataclysmic impacts of Melissa.

Devastation left behind

Across the Caribbean, officials painted a consistent picture of the destruction Melissa left behind.

“The conditions here are devastating. ‘Catastrophic’ is a mild term based on what we are observing here,” Richard Solomon, the mayor of the southwest Jamaican city of Black River, where Hurricane Melissa made landfall, said in a video posted by the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

Around 140,000 people were cut off as the storm pummeled the island, the government has said.

A CNN crew observed residents and military personnel push more than a dozen ambulances past storm debris in the town of Santa Cruz as the medical convoy headed to a coastal area in western Jamaica, which was hit hard.

Authorities in Jamaica have recovered at least four bodies in the badly hit St. Elizabeth Parish in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, a source in the government told CNN on Wednesday. The Jamaica Constabulary Force confirmed eight more deaths on Thursday in Westmoreland, Hanover and St. James.

Three people also died during storm preparations.

Holness declared the country a disaster area Tuesday, as he sought to deter price gouging.

“We must… continue to proactively maintain stability, protect consumers, and prevent any exploitation at a time when citizens are securing food, water, and supplies,” Holness said.

Around 77% of the country was left without electricity after Melissa crossed, a spokesperson said. The country’s infrastructure has taken a battering, leaving it “severely compromised,” according to Desmond McKenzie, Jamaica’s minister of local government and community development.

Around 25,000 tourists remained in Jamaica as the country emerged from the storm, Dana Morris Dixon, minister of education, skills, youth and information, said in a statement.

In the already beleaguered country of Haiti, 23 people have died and 13 are missing, the country’s Civil Protection Agency said Wednesday. Twenty of the deaths, including 10 children, happened when a flooded river in Petit-Goâve burst its banks, the agency said, revising an earlier death toll of 25 reported by the mayor.

Steven Guadard, who lives in Petit-Goâve, told the Associated Press the storm killed his entire family.

“I had four children at home: a 1-month-old baby, a 7-year-old, an 8-year-old and another who was about to turn 4,” he said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Hurricane Melissa had wrought “significant” damage on the island.

“It has been a highly complex night, with significant damage reported,” Díaz-Canel wrote on X. “I urge our people to remain vigilant, to uphold discipline, and to continue taking all necessary precautions.”

Recovery efforts

Several international efforts have already been launched to aid in the recovery efforts.

The United Kingdom said on Wednesday it was deploying £2.5 million ($3.3 million) in emergency humanitarian funding.

China’s ambassador to Cuba shared a video on social media showing hundreds of boxes labeled as “family kit” being transported from a warehouse.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday authorized “an immediate US response” to mobilize support for affected communities in the Caribbean, according to a statement released by the State Department.

Within hours, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “deployed a regional Disaster Assistance Response Team, including urban search-and-rescue teams, to assess needs and provide search and recovery assistance,” the statement read.

“The State Department is collaborating with UN agencies, NGOs, and host governments to deliver food, water, medical supplies, hygiene kits, temporary shelter, and search and rescue support.”

The Jamaican government launched an official website for relief and recovery efforts, where users can access updates on flooding locations or blocked roads and locate shelters.

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Derek Van Dam, Devon Sayers, Mary Gilbert, Elise Hammond, Joe Sutton, Avery Schmitz, and Max Saltman contributed to this report.

Twenty-five people were killed in Haiti when a nearby river flooded their homes and another three died in the storm, officials said.

The storm is projected to strike the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands and eventually Bermuda with vicious conditions later Wednesday, FOX Weather reports.

Melissa made devastating landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane, wiping out power to 500,000 people there as experts brand it the “storm of the century.”

Live updates have ended.

A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter.

“I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.

The extent of the damage from the deadly hurricane was unclear Wednesday as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted in the region.

“It is too early for us to say definitively,” said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister.

A girl looks out a rain-splattered bus window as she is evacuated before the arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Canizo, a community in Santiago de Cuba, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ramón Espinosa) Photo:

Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 185 mph (295 kph), one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects.

At least 25 people have died across Haiti and 18 are missing, Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said in a statement Wednesday. Twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes. At least eight are dead in Jamaica.

In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off buildings Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.

“That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.

Forecasters expect Melissa, now a Category 2 hurricane, to bring dangerous winds, flooding and storm surge to the Bahamas overnight into Thursday.

Jamaica rushes to assess the damage

In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters Wednesday after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dixon said 77% of the island was without power.

The outages complicated assessing the damage because of “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.

“Recovery will take time, but the government is fully mobilized,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a statement. “Relief supplies are being prepared, and we are doing everything possible to restore normalcy quickly.”

Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a southwestern coastal town of approximately 5,000 people, pleaded for aid at a news conference Wednesday.

“Catastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,” Mayor Richard Solomon said.

Solomon said the local rescue infrastructure had been demolished by the storm. The hospital, police units and emergency services were inundated by floods and unable to conduct emergency operations.

Jamaican Transportation Minister Daryl Vaz said two of the island’s airports will reopen Wednesday to relief flights only, with U.N. agencies and dozens of nonprofits on standby to distribute basic goods.

“The devastation is enormous,” he said. “We need all hands on deck to recover stronger and to help those in need at this time.”

The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X.

St. Elizabeth Police Superintendent Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network on Wednesday that authorities have found at least four bodies in southwest Jamaica. One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told Nationwide News Network.

Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic.

Melissa devastates Haitian town

Hurricane Melissa damaged more than 160 homes and destroyed 80 others in the town of Petit-Goâve, where 10 of the 20 people killed there were children, Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency said Wednesday.

Lawyer Charly Saint-Vil, 30, said he saw bodies lying among the debris after the storm as he walked the streets of the small coastal town where he grew up. People screamed as they searched for their missing children, he said.

“People have lost everything,” Saint-Vil said.

Although the immediate threat of the storm has passed, Saint-Vil said Petit-Goâve’s residents were living in fear about access to medicine, water and food in the coming days given the political instability in Haiti.

“We don’t know what will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” he said.

For now, neighbors are helping one another source necessities and find places to sleep. Saint-Vil is hosting a number of friends who lost their homes in his small apartment.

“What I can do, I will do it, but it’s not easy because the situation is really complicated for everyone,” he said.

Cuba rides out the storm

People in the eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba began clearing debris around the collapsed walls of their homes Wednesday after Melissa made landfall in the region hours earlier.

“Life is what matters,” Alexis Ramos, a 54-year-old fisherman, said as he surveyed his destroyed home and shielded himself from the intermittent rain with a yellow raincoat. “Repairing this costs money, a lot of money.”

Local media showed images of the Juan Bruno Zayas Clinical Hospital with severe damage: glass scattered across the floor, waiting rooms in ruins and masonry walls crumpled on the ground.

“As soon as conditions allow, we will begin the recovery. We are ready,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X.

The hurricane could worsen Cuba’s severe economic crisis, which already has led to prolonged power blackouts along with fuel and food shortages.

Cuba’s National Institute of Hydraulic Resources reported accumulated rainfall of 15 inches (38 centimeters) in Charco Redondo and 14 inches (36 centimeters) in Las Villas Reservoir.

Wednesday night, Melissa had top sustained winds near 100 mph (155 kph) and was moving north-northeast at 21 mph (33 kph) according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centered about 105 miles (170 kilometers) east-northeast of the central Bahamas and about 800 miles (1,285 kilometers) southwest of Bermuda.

Authorities in the Bahamas were evacuating dozens of people from the archipelago’s southeast corner ahead of Melissa’s arrival. By late Thursday, Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda.

___

Rodríguez reported from Havana, Myers from Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Sanon from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Hurricane Melissa is pummeling the Caribbean island of Cuba after it first caused devastation in Haiti and Jamaica, leading to the deaths of at least 32 people.

Twenty of the reported deaths on Wednesday came after a river burst its banks in the southern coastal Haitian town of Petit-Goave, flooding and collapsing dozens of homes.

The mayor of the town, Jean Bertrand Subreme, said that people were still trapped under the rubble of their homes.

“I am overwhelmed by the situation,” Subreme said, as he pleaded for help from the government.

Three other deaths were reported from Melissa in Haiti. Eight people were killed in Jamaica, including a baby killed after a tree fell in the western side of the island, according to State Minister Abka Fitz-Henley. One person was also reported to have been killed in the Dominican Republic.

The storm was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record when it hit Jamaica on Tuesday, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

As it crossed Cuba on Wednesday, it weakened to a Category 2 storm from its previous Category 5 classification. It is projected to move into the Bahamas later on Wednesday, where dozens of people have been evacuated from the south east of the archipelago.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness had declared Jamaica a “disaster area” after Hurricane Melissa barrelled across the island.

The hurricane ripped off the roofs of homes, inundated Jamaica’s “bread basket”, and felled power lines and trees, leaving most of its 2.8 million people without electricity.

Advertisement

“It’s not going to be an easy road, Jamaica,” said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council. “I know persons … are wondering what their futures are going to be like.”

Melissa took hours to cross over Jamaica, a passage over land that diminished its winds, before it ramped back up as it continued towards Cuba.

The governor of Cuba’s Granma, Yanetsy Terry Gutierrez, said that parts of the province, including in the provincial capital Jiguani, were “under water”.

Officials in Cuba have also reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads, and roofs blown off.

‘Communication blackout’

The Jamaican government had lifted the tropical storm warning by Wednesday, but officials are struggling to assess the damage.

“There’s a total communications blockout on that side,” said Richard Thompson, the acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, referring to the south and southwest of the island.

McKenzie said that four hospitals had been damaged and one was left without power, forcing the evacuation of 75 patients.

Heavy damage was also reported in Clarendon, in Jamaica’s south, and Saint Elizabeth, in the southwest, where a landslide blocked main roads in the town of Santa Cruz, and winds ripped off part of the roof of a school used as a shelter.

“I never saw anything like this before in all my years living here,” said one resident of the town, Jennifer Small.

“The entire hillside came down last night,” said another, Robert James.

Prime Minister Holness said on Tuesday that his government was mobilising quickly to start relief and recovery efforts by Wednesday morning.

Even before Melissa slammed into Jamaica, seven deaths – three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic – were caused by the hurricane.

A roof was completely torn off a building at a section of the Savanna La Mar Public General Hospital due to the passage of Hurricane Melissa. The system made landfall earlier today near New Hope district in Westmoreland, Jamaica. #GLNRToday #TrackingMelissa pic.twitter.com/zBnm9bu4Oq — Jamaica Gleaner (@JamaicaGleaner) October 28, 2025

‘Monstrous Melissa’

Robian Williams, a journalist with the Nationwide News Network radio broadcaster in Kingston, told Al Jazeera that the storm was the “worst we’ve ever experienced”.

“It’s truly heartbreaking, devastating,” she said from the capital.

Advertisement

“We’re calling Hurricane Melissa ‘Monstrous Melissa’ here in Jamaica because that’s how powerful she was. … The devastation is widespread, mostly being felt and still being felt in the western ends of the country at this point in time. So many homes, so many people have been displaced,” she said.

“We did prepare, but there wasn’t much that we could have done.”

In Kingston, Lisa Sangster, a 30-year-old communications specialist, said her home was devastated by the storm.

“My sister … explained that parts of our roof were blown off and other parts caved in and the entire house was flooded,” she told the AFP news agency. “Outside structures like our outdoor kitchen, dog kennel and farm animal pens were also gone, destroyed.”

Mathue Tapper, 31, told AFP that those in the capital were “lucky”, but he feared for people in Jamaica’s more rural areas.

“My heart goes out to the folks living on the western end of the island,” he said.

Climate change

Although Jamaica and Cuba are used to hurricanes, climate change is making the storms more severe.

British-Jamaican climate change activist and author Mikaela Loach said in a video shared on social media that Melissa “gained energy from the extremely and unnaturally hot seas in the Caribbean”.

“These sea temperatures are not natural,” Loach said. “They’re extremely hot because of the gases that have resulted from burning fossil fuels.”

“Countries like Jamaica, countries that are most vulnerable to climate disaster, are also countries that have had their wealth and resources stripped away from them through colonial bondage,” Loach added.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Holness urged wealthy countries to increase climate financing to assist countries like Jamaica with adapting to the effects of a warming world.

“Climate change is not a distant threat or an academic consideration. It is a daily reality for small island developing states like Jamaica,” he said.

Jamaica is responsible for just 0.02 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming, according to data from the World Resources Institute.

But like other tropical islands, it is expected to continue to bear the brunt of worsening climate effects.