Hurricane Melissa left at least dozens dead and caused widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica, where roofless homes, toppled utility poles and water-logged furniture dominated the landscape Wednesday.
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.
Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 295 kilometres (185 miles) per hour. It was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, and the strongest ever to hit the island since record-keeping began in 1851. It eventually weakened and moved 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 1 hurricane, to bring dangerous winds, flooding, and storm surge to the Bahamas on Wednesday night.
A rapid attribution by the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London concluded that climate change made Hurricane Melissa four times more likely and increased its severity by 12%.
"Jamaica had plenty of time and experience to prepare for this storm, but there are limits to how countries can prepare and adapt," Grantham Institute Director Ralf Toumi said in a release. "Adaptation to climate change is vital but it is not a sufficient response to global warming. The emission of greenhouse gases also has to stop."
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Citing preliminary analysis by disaster modellers at Enki Research, Grantham put the cost of the damage in Jamaica at US$7.7 billion, or about 37% of the country's GDP as of 2024.
The hurricane will almost certainly force investors to pay out the full value of a US$150-million catastrophe bond arranged by the World Bank, "designed as the ultimate backstop to help provide funds to pay for only the most extreme weather events," Bloomberg reports.
"We expect the cat bond to pay out in full or at least close to it," said Icosa Investments AG CEO Florian Steiger. That mechanism will "hopefully bring some fast relief funds to the most affected communities."
After one of "the most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever observed," Icosa added on LinkedIn, "the human toll and physical damage will be severe, with recovery efforts requiring significant international support over the coming months and years."
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 made it more complicated to assess 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 community's 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 United Nations agencies and dozens of non-profits 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 social media.
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.
Hurricane Melissa damaged more than 160 homes and destroyed 80 others in the town of Petit-Gove, where 10 of the 20 people killed 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-Gove'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, neighbours 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.
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," said Alexis Ramos, a 54-year-old fisherman, 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 Diaz-Canel wrote on social media.
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 38 centimetres (15 inches) in Charco Redondo and 36 centimetres (14 inches) in Las Villas Reservoir.
Wednesday night, Melissa had top sustained winds of 150 kilometres/90 miles per hour and was moving north-northeast at 26 kilometres/16 miles per hour, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centred about 100 kilometres east of the central Bahamas and about 1,385 kilometres southwest of Bermuda.
Authorities in the Bahamas were evacuating dozens of people from the archipelago's southeast corner ahead of Melissa's arrival.
Melissa's centre was forecast to move through southeastern Bahamas later Wednesday, generating up to two metres of storm surge in the area. By late Thursday, Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda.
The main body of this story was published by The Associated Press and republished by The Canadian Press on Oct. 29, 2025.
Rodriguez reported from Havana, Myers from Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Sanon from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.