Jamaica assessing damage as Hurricane Melissa takes aim at Cuba

Officials in Jamaica are starting the process of assessing the damage caused by Hurricane Melissa today after the storm ripped across the island yesterday.

Words like catastrophic, devastating and apocalyptic are being used to describe the damage left by Hurricane Melissa.

Late yesterday, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared the island a disaster area, and made  it clear that the storm had had a devastating impact on the island, causing significant damage to hospitals, homes and businesses.

Reports from a variety of sources indicate that power outages are widespread, areas on the island’s western side are heavily flooded, roads are blocked with downed power lines and trees.

As Jamaica works to determine the full extent of the damage, reports from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) indicate that Hurricane Melissa is expected to cross eastern Cuba this morning and as Travel Press Today went to press, there were already reports coming in that indicated Melissa was already battering that island.

The NHC said that for eastern Cuba, storm total rainfall of 10 to 20 inches are expected through today with local amounts to 25 inches expected over mountainous terrain and it warns that this will cause life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flash flooding with numerous landslides.

Later today, NHC says Hurricane Melissa – which it expects to remain a powerful hurricane — will move across the southeastern or central Bahamas and then late Thursday or Thursday night, it wll pass near or to the west of Bermuda.