Havana: Hurricane Melissa churned toward Cuba’s second-largest city with the force of a powerful Category 4 storm, hours after making landfall in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever cyclone on record to hit that Caribbean island nation. Melissa roared ashore near Jamaica’s southwestern town of New Hope, packing sustained winds of up to 295 kilometers per hour, according to the US National Hurricane Centre, well above the minimum 252 kilometers per hour wind speed of a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
According to Emirates News Agency, in southwestern Jamaica, the parish of St. Elizabeth was left “underwater,” with more than 500,000 residents without power. The hurricane was forecast to curve to the northeast on a trajectory toward Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-most populous city. Cuban authorities said some 500,000 people were ordered to move to higher ground. In the Bahamas, next in Melissa’s path to the northeast, the government ordered evacuations of residents in southern portions of that archipelago.
Farther to the east, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic had faced days of torrential downpours leading to at least four deaths, authorities there said. Local media reported at least three deaths in Jamaica during storm preparations.