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Aerial footage shows extensive flooding and damage to buildings across western Jamaica, caused by the record-breaking Hurricane Melissa.
Relief organizations pack up supplies for Jamaica in wake of Hurricane Melissa
Disaster relief from the U.S. to Jamaica is delayed due to the government shutdown, but several private organizations are mobilizing to send relief after Hurricane Melissa. NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch spoke to one group packing up soup, hydration packets and water to send to the island.
Jamaica's health ministry urges blood donations after hurricane
Jamaica’s health ministry urged people to give blood if they're able to, after the country was struck by then-Category 5 Hurricane Melissa.
National blood supplies were “critically low for persons who may require transfusions for surgery, trauma care, and childbirth complications,” the ministry said in a statement.
“We are urging all Jamaicans who are able to give blood," said the chief medical officer, Dr. Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie. "Your donation can save lives, especially at a time when hospitals are still in emergency mode and every unit counts."
Jamaica’s prime minister posts video of devastation in St. Elizabeth
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness today took an aerial view of the devastation in St. Elizabeth Parish, which is just east of where then-Category 5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall yesterday afternoon.
Video he posted to social media shows destroyed homes and other buildings and debris all over the landscape.
Melissa strengthens to Category 2 as it moves past Bahamas
Hurricane Melissa’s maximum sustained winds rose to 100 mph late tonight as the storm was bringing damaging wind and heavy rain to the Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said, raising it to a Category 2 storm.
Category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is above 96 mph. Earlier, the storm’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to 90 mph.
At 11 p.m. ET the center of the hurricane was moving away from the Bahamas, traveling north-northeast at 21 mph, the NHC said in a bulletin. Its center was moving away from San Salvador Island, according to the NHC's website.
But hurricane conditions are still occurring in the southeastern and central Bahamas and should continue overnight, the NHC said. Five to 10 inches of rain were forecast for parts of the Bahamas through tomorrow morning, which is expected to cause flash flooding.
The storm is forecast to pass near or to the west of Bermuda late tomorrow or tomorrow night, the NHC said.
Jamaica 'devastated to levels never seen before,' U.N. official says
The U.N. regional coordinator for Jamaica said the island nation has suffered unprecedented damage from then-Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, which struck yesterday and traveled in a path across the country.
Dennis Zulu, the U.N. resident coordinator in Jamaica, told reporters in a video briefing today that the devastation was not confined just to the path of the hurricane but also to the entire country.
“At the moment what we’re seeing in preliminary assessments is a country that’s been devastated to levels never seen before,” Zulu said.
Property, roads, network connectivity and energy infrastructure have all been severely damaged, and “there’s been massive dislocation of services. We have people living in shelters across the country,” he said.
The U.N. is working in partnership with national authorities and others to assess the problems and determine how international organizations can respond, he said.
Zulu said the number of those in need is "huge." He said a rough ballpark estimate is 1 million people affected.
Video captured the destruction at Sangster International Airport in Jamaica after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa hit the island. Airport officials said they are “assessing the damage to restore operations as soon as conditions allow.”
Hurricane conditions occurring in Bahamas
Damaging winds and heavy rain were happening as hurricane conditions occurred in parts of the Bahamas as Melissa moves over the region, forecasters said.
Hurricane Melissa remained a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds, and its center was about 65 miles east of the central Bahamas at 5 p.m., the National Hurricane Center said in a bulletin.
The storm was moving north-northeast at around 16 mph, the NHC said.
It was causing hurricane conditions in southeastern and central Bahamas, which will continue through tonight, the NHC said.
Hurricane Melissa was a rare event, even with climate change
Climate change boosted Hurricane Melissa’s wind speed by about 7% and it made a storm that would have been expected once every 8,000 years about four times as likely.
That’s according to a new rapid analysis of the effects global warming had on the hurricane, released this evening by the Grantham Institute at Imperial College in London.
The research suggests the storm was an extremely rare event, even with global warming providing it extra heat in the sky and sea, which acts as fuel for tropical storms. The study suggests a storm as powerful as Hurricane Melissa could be expected once every 1,700 years in today’s climate, which has warmed roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees F) since the Industrial Revolution.
“Man-made climate change clearly made Hurricane Melissa stronger and more destructive,” Ralf Toumi, director of the Grantham Institute, said in a news release. “These storms will become even more devastating in the future if we continue overheating the planet by burning fossil fuels.”
The researchers did not estimate the effects of climate change on rainfall totals or flooding in Jamaica. They said that they typically use satellite data to do those calculations and that such data is not available because of the U.S. government shutdown.
The team used 42 years of tropical storm data to create a model that can estimate the statistical likelihood of hurricanes in different climatological conditions.
The resulting analysis has not yet undergone peer review because the storm made landfall so recently. However, the researchers outlined their process in a peer-reviewed 2024 research paper, and their analysis of a 2013 typhoon held up to peer review in the journal of Atmospheric Science Letters.
The findings roughly track with estimates from a group called ClimaMeter, which also performs quick analyses of major weather events. The group suggested that Hurricane Melissa had about 10% more rainfall and 10% stronger winds because of climate change.
State Department delayed by shutdown, elimination of USAID in storm response
The United States was delayed in sending a disaster assistance response team (DART) to Jamaica ahead of Hurricane Melissa, one former and two current U.S. officials told NBC News, citing the limited available resources resulting from the government shutdown and a lack of preparedness after the elimination of USAID.
USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign aid, was dismantled by the Trump administration this year after criticism by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Under USAID, a DART team would have been pre-positioned on the ground ahead of the Category 5 hurricane that struck Jamaica yesterday and devastated large parts of the country.
Instead, with many employees furloughed, the State Department team missed its window to fly in advance of the hurricane, a former U.S. official said, and with most airports closed for commercial flights because of the storm, the team is just now deploying to the region.
The State Department announced this morning it was sending a regional DART team and activated U.S. urban search-and rescue teams to help in the response.
“These teams are working with affected countries and local communities to determine what assistance is needed and with interagency, international, and U.S. military partners to coordinate emergency response efforts,” the State Department announced on X.
Despite the cuts to USAID and humanitarian assistance budgets more broadly, the State Department will still be able to provide disaster relief to Jamaica and other countries in the region — it will just be “smaller, slower and less organized,” a U.S. official said.
A State Department spokesperson said late last night Tuesday that the United States had received a formal assistance request from the Jamaican government. But Jamaica informally requested U.S. assistance days before, according to a U.S. official and a former U.S. official.
“You need a flexibility of an agency that can get out there as fast as possible, give people cash to go out and do stuff that has not happened yet,” the former U.S. official said. “And that’s the sad part.”
The U.S. military is reviewing standing plans for U.S. military support to U.S. interagency-led foreign disaster assistance missions, a U.S. Southern Command spokesperson said.
“As a preparatory measure, we have initiated planning to deploy a situational assessment team that will be tasked with evaluating the conditions in hurricane-stricken areas and the unique requirements needed for timely and effective life-saving, urgent humanitarian aid, and disaster response operations,” the SOUTHCOM spokesperson said. “Future decisions on potential U.S. support will be based on their assessments, but it is still too soon to speculate on what that support will consist of.”
