Jamaicans reeling from Hurricane Melissa

What happened

Jamaica’s death toll from Hurricane Melissa has risen to at least 28 people, the country’s government said Saturday, and some of the areas hit hardest by the Category 5 storm have yet to be reached as crews work to clear roads and debris. The hurricane, one of the strongest ever recorded in the Caribbean, also carved a path of destruction through Cuba and the Bahamas last week, and left 30 people dead in Haiti.

Who said what

Nearly a week after the hurricane “pummeled into western Jamaica,” the BBC said, people in “devastated communities along the coast are still desperately waiting for help,” with “little food, no power or running water, and no idea of when normalcy will return.” The western part of the island is “considered Jamaica’s breadbasket,” Reuters said, and the devastation to livestock and “flattened fields” there have led to concerns of food scarcity as “farmers struggle to recover and replant.”

Melissa will have a “crippling effect on our agricultural sector,” Agriculture Minister Floyd Green said. But the full extent of the damage won’t be known until assessments are completed this week.

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What next?

Melissa was “among the worst-case scenarios Jamaica could have imagined,” The New York Times said, and the damage will test the island’s “uncommonly sophisticated” and “multilayered financial plan to respond to natural disasters.” The U.S. and other countries have pledged aid and other assistance, but the hurricane will also be a “real test for U.S. disaster response capabilities since the shutdown of USAID,” NPR said.