By Jack Phillips
The U.S. Department of State said on Wednesday that it will be deploying emergency teams to Caribbean countries that were slammed by Hurricane Melissa this week.
“In response to catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Melissa in many Caribbean countries, the State Department is deploying a regional Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) and activated US-based Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams to bolster response efforts,” the department said in a post on X.
The State Department said its teams will work with “affected countries and local communities to determine what assistance is needed and with interagency, international, and U.S. military partners to coordinate emergency response efforts.”
While the post did not specify which countries the response team would be deployed to, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a catastrophic Category 5 storm. The storm also slammed eastern Cuba as a major hurricane earlier on Wednesday, and it’s currently located in a small strip of water between Cuba and the Bahamas.
Currently, the Category 2 storm is located just to the north of eastern Cuba, with 105 mph winds, according to the National Hurricane Center. It will hit the southeastern and central Bahamas starting later on Wednesday before the storm moves to the northwest, brushing near Bermuda on Friday.
Jamaican officials reported complications in assessing the damage, while the National Hurricane Center said the local government had lifted the tropical storm warning.
“There’s a total communication blackout on that side,” Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network. More than half a million customers were without power late Tuesday.
“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said earlier this week, according to a government service Facebook page. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”
The country’s minister of community development, Desmond McKenzie, said in a statement that all designated hurricane shelters will remain open as long as needed to help people affected by Melissa.
“It is safe to say that our shelters have seen increased numbers. We also notice there are communities where residents have created makeshift shelters [and], in most cases, we were able to get limited supplies to those persons within those shelters,” he said.
Aside from the United States, the United Nations confirmed that its food program is responding to the damage that was done in Jamaica.
Jamaica’s mountains, it noted, pose an increase in the “risk of flash floods, major landslides, and infrastructure damage,” according to a news release. Due to the risk of floods and landslides combined with storm surge flooding, the U.N. agency said it will be difficult to transport humanitarian staff and aid into the country, so alternative landing strips will be used.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
