2024-07-15 04:02:19
Hurricane Beryl is bearing down on Jamaica on Wednesday amid warnings from forecasters of life-threatening winds and storm surge, leaving at least seven dead and causing considerable damage in the southeastern Caribbean Sea.
Beryl is expected to pass near or over Jamaica in the next few hours as a Category 4 hurricane, according to the latest report from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
This is the first storm to reach Category 4 status in June and the first to reach Category 5 status in July since the NHC began keeping records.
Jamaicans have rushed to buy food, water, gasoline and other essential items. At ports, some residents have pulled boats out of the water and tied them to fences.
Beryl is advancing with maximum sustained winds of 230 km/h, according to the NHC.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared a curfew on the island between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. and urged citizens to respect evacuation orders.
“If you live in a low-lying area, historically prone to flooding and landslides, or if you live on the banks of a river,” he said in a video posted on social media, “I implore you to evacuate to a shelter, or to safer ground.”
Desmon Brown, manager of Kingston’s National Stadium, said his staff had been mobilised to be prepared.
“We’ve boarded up the windows, we’ve covered up our equipment, including computers, printers and that sort of thing. The rest of it is mostly concrete, so there’s not much we can do,” Brown told the Jamaica Observer newspaper.
The NHC expects Beryl to “pass near or over” the Cayman Islands late Wednesday or early Thursday. It has also issued tropical storm warnings for Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
– «No communications» –
The hurricane has left at least seven dead in its wake, with three fatalities in Grenada, where the storm made landfall on Monday; one in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and three in Venezuela, according to local authorities.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the island of Carriacou had been left largely isolated, with homes, telecommunications and fuel facilities wiped out by the hurricane.
“We have had almost no communication with Carriacou in the last 12 hours, except briefly this morning by satellite phone,” Mitchell told a news conference.
The 35-square-kilometer (14-square-mile) island has about 9,000 residents. At least two people died there and a third died on the country’s main island, Grenada, when a tree fell on a house, Mitchell said.
In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, one person was reported dead on the island of Bequia as a result of the storm. In Venezuela, three people died in the coastal state of Sucre, where two men and two women were also reported missing.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday that Beryl could endanger at least three million children and adolescents in the Caribbean after damaging safe spaces for them, “including their homes and schools.”
“As Hurricane Beryl continues its path across the Caribbean Sea, every effort must be made to prevent loss of life and keep children safe,” said Karin Hulshof, UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
– Climate change –
Experts say it is very rare for such a powerful storm to form so early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.
North Atlantic waters are one to three degrees Celsius warmer than normal, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell, who has family on Carriacou Island, said climate change was “driving disasters to unprecedented levels of destruction”.
“Disasters on a scale that used to be the stuff of science fiction are becoming meteorological fact, and the climate crisis is the main culprit,” he said on Monday.
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© Agence France-Presse
