We begin our next segment with an update on the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. So far, 28 persons have been confirmed dead but a vast majority of Jamaicans are still without electricity and telephone service, so authorities have no real idea how many people died in many areas of the country.
In a meeting held yesterday with regional partners from The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency and the Caribbean Development Bank to coordinate recovery efforts, Prime Minister Andrew Holness expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of support they have received from other countries. He describes their current situation recovering from the "disaster of the century":
Andrew Holness, Jamaica Prime Minister
"Jamaica is hardened and indeed grateful for the response from regional and Caricom entities to what I would probably describe as, except for COVID, the disaster of the century. And in many ways, it has been described in that way in terms of metereological terms, it would have tied for the most powerful storm in 90 years, or since, since the recording of the storms."
"And the best way to describe it is at an atomic level some of the points of impact, it would be comparable to pictures that you would have seen of the Hiroshima blast. When I flew over the disaster area, it was clear that there was a trail of destruction which would match the corridor that the eye took of the horizon."
"And you can see the grades of the structure at the eye, total devastation. And then of course, moderate to severe outside of that outer bands of the eye. And it was most stark when flying over the cockpit country, I had the opportunity to fly in the corridor of the destruction, and it was as if every tree was stripped of its leaves and even big trees, big trucks were snapped like to it."
"It left almost a winter effect on our forests in the cockpit country. But then a few miles over, you could see green, the winds were not as strong to have the same effect. But of course, the real disaster is a human disaster. People who are left homeless, who are dislocated, children who are traumatized."
"But you know, the Jamaican spirit is naturally one of resilience."
