How do you rebuild all this?’ Black River residents assess damage after Hurricane Melissa Guardian Natricia Duncan in St Elizabeth  Fri 31 Oct 2025 People of Jamaican coastal town described as storm’s ground zero are traumatised and desperate for help. It is a treacherous journey to Black River, a coastal town in Jamaica’s southwestern parish of St Elizabeth, which this week bore the brunt of Hurricane Melissa As you get closer to Black River, which has been described as ground zero for the category 5 hurricane’s impact, it becomes clear that almost every house and building has lost its roof. The town centre has been annihilated and now resembles a demolition site.

 
Among the crumpled buildings and streets filled with zinc sheets from roofs and other dangerous debris are people traumatised, bewildered, grieving and desperate for help. Families with children who appear to be setting up residence in a bus shelter and others scouring the debris for food are indications of an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Some had come to Black River, the parish capital, from nearby devastated areas hoping to find aid, only to discover a scene of utter devastation. As you get closer to Black River, which has been described as ground zero for the category 5 hurricane’s impact, it becomes clear that almost every house and building has lost its roof. The town centre has been annihilated and now resembles a demolition site.

Among the crumpled buildings and streets filled with zinc sheets from roofs and other dangerous debris are people traumatised, bewildered, grieving and desperate for help. Families with children who appear to be setting up residence in a bus shelter and others scouring the debris for food are indications of an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Some had come to Black River, the parish capital, from nearby devastated areas hoping to find aid, only to discover a scene of utter devastation. Speaking through tears, Beverly Stephens, who survived the storm with her son and elderly mother who is unable to walk, asked the Guardian to “tell the world that Jamaica needs help”. Having sought refuge in a room that had a reinforced roof, she said, she and her son spent three hours holding a door that the wind seemed intent on ripping off. The death toll from the storm, which hit Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic hardest, is thought to be 50 – 19 in Jamaica and 31 in Haiti – and is expected to rise. 

Communication networks remain largely down in Jamaica and Cuba and the full scale of the damage could take days to confirm. About 462,000 people were without power in Jamaica, the country’s information minister said on Friday night. The hurricane tied with a 1935 record for the most intense Atlantic storm ever to make landfall when it hit Jamaica on Tuesday, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. One woman in Black River told the Guardian she was on the way to the police station to report a death. Another, choking back tears, said she had lost everything. Annette Royal, who was visiting Black River from the western parish of Westmoreland, said every house in her area was hit. “The country is mashed up,” she said. “We need food, we need water, we need shelter, we need everything to survive, because if we don’t get all of these things we will suffer in Jamaica.”....read on    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/31/black-river-jamaica-residents-assess-damage-after-hurricane-melissa