50 dead as Caribbean digs out from Hurricane Melissa

50 dead as Caribbean digs out from Hurricane Melissa
by AFP Staff Writers
Kingston, Jamaica (AFP) Nov 2, 2025

Jamaican officials announced plans Saturday to set up multiple field hospitals as it recovers from Hurricane Melissa, with the death toll numbering at least 50 across the Caribbean -- and expected to rise.

The island's confirmed deaths remain at 19 as of Saturday, though Health Minister Christopher Tufton told a briefing "I would imagine it's more... because there are still places that we have had difficulties reaching."

Haiti's Civil Protection department meanwhile said at least 31 people have been killed there as a result of the storm.

Melissa tore across Jamaica as a ferocious top-level Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful storm ever recorded on the island, with sustained winds peaking at 185 miles (nearly 300 kilometers) per hour while drenching the country with torrential rain.

Hospitals in western Jamaica were particularly hard-hit, prompting officials to deploy several field hospitals in the coming days to shore up health responses.

The first such field hospital -- in Black River, the capital of the hardest hit province -- "is expected to be delivered sometime tomorrow and immediately we'll begin to deploy and to set up that facility," Tufton said.

"That facility will come fully equipped, which will include an operating theater and other critical diagnostic equipment, and some team members to support the local team," he said, adding officials expect the hospital to be up and running in the coming week.

Additional hospitals are expected to pop up with aid from the World Health Organization and several countries, including Spain, Canada and India, Tufton said.

Aid headed towards hurricane-ravaged Jamaica
Kingston, Jamaica (AFP) Oct 31, 2025 - Planes and helicopters carrying humanitarian aid headed to Jamaica on Friday, three days after Melissa slammed into the island nation and killed at least 19 people.

Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon told a briefing that authorities had "quite credible" reports of possibly five additional deaths but had not yet been able to confirm.

"We're still at 19 confirmed, but we do expect that will change today," she said.

Kingston's international airport, which reopened Thursday, has already received 13 cargo relief flights, and at least 20 more are expected Friday, Transportation Minister Daryl Vaz said.

All three of the island's international airports were set to resume operations by Saturday morning, he added, for both humanitarian and commercial flights.

The United States was sending between eight and 10 helicopters to the Caribbean nation that would be large enough to transfer patients.

"I would say to all of those persons who are still out here waiting and looking up in the sky that you will start to see" and "hear a lot of activity," he said.

"You probably are feeling that you are forgotten. You are not forgotten."

The hurricane hit western Jamaica the hardest, and people there remain cut off with communications and electricity down.

"The devastation on the west is unimaginable," said Morris Dixon, adding her thanks for the incoming aid: "The relief and the support that we have gotten is overwhelming."

Hurricane Melissa swiftly became one of the most powerful storms on record, reaching an intensity scientists said was made four times more likely because of human-caused climate change.

The system roared through the Caribbean and has claimed the lives of at least 49 people across the region.

It devastated parts of Jamaica as well as Cuba, and as of Friday was moving rapidly away from Bermuda.

Melissa 'killed us' say Cubans, already in storm's eye
El Cobre, Cuba (AFP) Oct 31, 2025 - Damian Figueredo escaped the collapse of his house in eastern Cuba, ripped away by Hurricane Melissa, with only seconds to spare.

"A few seconds later and it all would have fallen on top of me," he told AFP, surveying the ruins of his home in the town of El Cobre.

Figueredo is grateful to be alive but like many on the Communist island, which was already limping through its worst economic crisis in three decades when Melissa slammed into it on Tuesday night, he doesn't know how he will ever rebuild.

Th 52-year-old former gold miner, who has had difficulty walking since an mining accident seven years ago, was in bed when Melissa churned past at up to 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour.

The ferocious storm reduced El Cobre, the 7,000-population home of a sanctuary to the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, to rubble.

All that remains of Figueredo's house is a chunk of the living-room.

Bricks, tiles, doors, and windows lie scattered on the ground.

"My situation is desperate," said the miner, dismissing his state pension of 3,000 Cuban pesos (US$6 at the informal exchange rate) as "not enough for anything."

- 'National tragedy' -

Melissa did not cause fatalities in Cuba, according to authorities, but it knocked the stuffing out of the impoverished Caribbean nation, where fuel, electricity, hard currency and affordable foodstuffs were already in short supply.

The storm smashed windows, downed power cables and mobile communications, tore off roofs and tree branches and flooded streets and homes.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel described the damage as "extensive."

"We're in dire circumstances," said Rogelio de Dean, 45, a priest in El Cobre, whose church also suffered damage.

"The national tragedy left by the cyclone now adds to the already difficult daily reality of our people," the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, which launched an appeal for donations, emphasized in a statement.

Among the inhabitants of El Cobre and surrounding towns the mood was one of deep despair.

Melissa "killed us," said 65-year-old Felicia Correa, from a hamlet close to El Cobre.

"We were already going through tremendous hardship. Now, of course, we are much worse off."

- US aid offer rebuffed -

From a very low base of just two-and-a-half hours of electricity a day, inhabitants of the region now have none, with Melissa knocking out power to six of 15 provinces.

The government has declared the restoration of power a "priority" and efforts are under way to get humanitarian aid to the affected provinces.

Meanwhile, aid offers and pledges have been pouring in.

UN Secretary-General Ant�nio Guterres announced ple were killed.

Venezuela sent 26,000 tons of humanitarian aid to its historic ally Cuba.

The United States, which has maintained a six-decade-long trade embargo on Cuba, also rowed in with an offer for "immediate humanitarian assistance for "the brave Cuban people."

Cuba wasted no time in rebuffing the proposal.

"If that administration's desire to support our people were sincere, they would have unconditionally lifted the criminal blockade," Roberto Morales Ojeda, a member of the Communist Party of Cuba's Politburo wrote on X.

He added that Washington could further help by removing the island of 9.7 million people from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Former President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the list a week before leaving the White House, a decision that Trump reversed on his first day back in office.