Hurricane Beryl is approaching Jamaica

Hurricane Beryl, a powerful storm with dangerous winds and rough seas, slammed into Jamaica on Wednesday, as residents braced for the storm that killed seven people and wreaked havoc across the Caribbean.

Forecasters said around noon that the hurricane – unusually strong so early in the Atlantic season – was expected to pass near or over Jamaica in the next few hours as a life-threatening Category 4 storm on a five-point scale.

Beryl is the first storm since the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) began recording Category 4 hurricane strength in June, and the earliest to reach Category 5 strength in July.

All across Jamaica, people pulled boats out of the water and tied them to fences for safety, then rushed to buy food, water, gasoline and other necessities.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 145 mph (230 kph) as of midday Wednesday, the NHC said. Tropical storm conditions were spreading across the island, it said.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced an island-wide curfew from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and appealed to Jamaicans to comply with evacuation orders.

“If you live in low-lying areas, areas historically prone to flooding and landslides, or you live on the banks of a river,” he said in a video posted on social media, “I implore you to evacuate to shelter or safer ground.”

Desmon Brown, manager of the National Stadium in Kingston, said his staff had done everything they could to be ready.

“We’ve taped up the windows, covered the equipment, including computers, printers, things like that. Other than that, it’s mostly concrete, so there’s not much we can do,” Brown told the Jamaica Observer.

Hurricane warnings were also issued for the Cayman Islands farther west, where Beryl is expected to pass by or over them Wednesday night or Thursday morning, the NHC said.

The winds are then forecast to head towards the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, where they will weaken significantly.

‘No communication’

Beryl has already left a trail of deaths behind it: at least three people died in Grenada, where the storm made landfall on Monday, one in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and three in Venezuela.

Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the island of Carriacou, which was hit by the eye of the cyclone, was completely cut off from the outside world, with homes, telecommunications facilities and fuel stations there razed to the ground.

“We have had virtually no communication with Carriacou in the last 12 hours, apart from a brief telephone call this morning via satellite,” Mitchell told a news conference.

The 13.5-square-mile (35-square-kilometer) island is home to about 9,000 people. At least two people died there, Mitchell said, and a third was killed on the country’s main island, Grenada, when a tree fell on a house.

In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, one person was killed on the island of Bequia by the storm, and in Venezuela’s northeastern state of Sucre, a man died when he was swept away by a swollen river, officials said.

Climate change

It is extremely rare for such a powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), warm ocean temperatures are key to hurricane formation. The North Atlantic is currently warmer than usual by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius (two to five degrees Fahrenheit).

UN climate chief Simon Stiell, who has family on the island of Carriacou, said climate change was “pushing disasters to record new levels of devastation”.

“Disasters on a scale that were once the stuff of science fiction are becoming meteorological fact, with the climate crisis being the main culprit,” he said on Monday, reporting the destruction of his parents’ property.

© 2024 AFP