Hurricane Melissa intensified to a Category 5 storm on Monday amid forecasts of “life-threatening flash flooding,” landslides, and “destructive winds” expected to impact Jamaica ahead of its landfall on Tuesday.
The storm is expected to be the strongest to ever hit the island.
“Many of these communities will not survive this flooding,” Desmond McKenzie, Jamaica’s minister of local government, warned during a news conference on Monday. “I want to urge Jamaicans to take this seriously.”
The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned local residents not to leave their shelters.
Seven communities were placed under emergency evacuation orders starting on Sunday night. More than 800 shelters have been opened across Jamaica, although only 218 people were housed in the shelters as of Sunday night, McKenzie said.
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Fishermen along the coast of the island began to gather their boats and secure their goods on Sunday night, according to the Jamaica Observer. Dennis Gordon, a vendor at the Ocho Rios Craft Market, told the local media outlet he was bracing for the impact, pointing to the 1998 catastrophic Category 4 Hurricane Gilbert. “We [will] take a good while to come back on our feet,” he said. “We go through Gilbert and it was very, very, bad; out of food, out of water, out of light. I can only hope it don’t reach back to this because it’s coming serious.”
Category 5 storms—the highest level a hurricane can reach on the Saffir-Simpson scale and strong enough to cause “uninhabitable conditions”—often lead to roof failure, the collapse of walls, and fallen poles and trees.
Meteorologists are warning residents of the destructive winds expected to cause broad infrastructural damage and power outages across “isolated communities” starting on Monday evening. Melissa already had sustained winds measuring 160 mph, according to the NHC’s most recent advisory.
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