At least seven people were killed across the northern Caribbean as category 5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall Tuesday on the southwestern coast of the island of Jamaica, according to local media reports.
The deaths were reported in different countries, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, said local media.
At 2 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), the eye of the hurricane was located over western Jamaica and was moving toward the north-northeast near 8 mph (13 km/h), said the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
The core of Melissa is expected to move across southeastern Cuba early Wednesday morning and move across the southeastern or central Bahamas later on Wednesday, the center said.
The storm surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves, according to the report.
Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness said on X that Hurricane Melissa is expected to produce rainfall amounts reaching 350 to 750 millimeters over parts of Jamaica in the next couple of days.
Many bridges and roads across the country have flooded, including some of the primary roads accessing remote areas, Jamaica’s National Works Agency said in various posts on social media.
Local media showed images of light infrastructure damage. The storm has left power and communications outages and the isolation of some communities in Jamaica.
Mandatory evacuation orders were put in place for areas in Jamaica across Kingston, Clarendon, St. Catherine and St. Andrew.
Around 1.5 million people in Jamaica would be directly affected, while Cuban officials said on Monday that they were evacuating more than 600,000 people.
Melissa’s slow movement may mean prolonged torrential rain in some areas, increasing the risk of deadly flooding and landslides.
Experts said that Melissa is one of the most powerful hurricane landfalls on record in the Atlantic Basin.
