Zimbabwe News Update
africanews
2 min read
CubaHurricane Melissa left dozens dead and widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, where roofless homes, fallen utility poles and water-logged furniture dominated the landscape Wednesday.A landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Winds ripped off part of the roof at a local high school, which is designated as a public shelter.”I never saw anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica as a catastrophic Category 5 storm with top winds of 295 kph, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba.
Still, even countries outside the storm’s direct path felt its devastating effects.In Haiti, flooding from Melissa killed at least 25 people in the southern coastal town of Petit-Goâve, its mayor told The Associated Press. Mayor Jean Bertrand Subrème said dozens of homes collapsed when the La Digue River burst its banks, and people were still trapped under rubble on Wednesday morning. Only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency was in the area, with residents struggling to evacuate amid heavy floodwaters.Officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off in Cuba on Wednesday, with the most destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters in eastern Cuba.”That was hell.
All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out on Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters on Wednesday and more streamed in throughout the day after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s e
