The extremely dangerous category 5 Hurriccane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, with officials warning about the catastrophic winds, flash flooding and strom surge associated with the storm, already blamed for three lives.
As the storm inches closer to the island, a representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said that the category 5 system ‘will be the strongest on the planet this year’ putting a million people at direct risk, ‘including families which are still recovering from Hurricane Beryl’ which hit Jamaica 16 months ago.
‘Roofs will be tested. Flood water will rise. Isolation will become a harsh reality for many,’ said Necephor Mghendi, the Trinidad-based IFRC’s head of Delegation for the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean.
The tropical cyclone specialist with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Anne-Claire Fontan, quoting the Miami based National Hurricane Center (NHC), said ‘total structural failure is likely.
‘I have never seen this sentence before. it’s a massive impact that is expected to be in Jamaica,’ she said.
The NHC in its latest bulleting said that the storm is about 40 miles south east of Negril in Jamaica and has maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour.
(Details in Full News section)