Haiti has seen the first downpours of Hurricane Melissa, as the slow-moving Category 5 storm was on course to barrel into Jamaica on Monday (October 27), in what could be one of the strongest storms on record for the Caribbean island.
In the western Les Cayes region, residents watched the flooding left by the storm.
In the capital, displaced residents powerlessly awaited the hurricane’s effects. According to UNICEF, three people died and one was injured in Port-au-Prince as Melissa passed.
As of 2 p.m. (1800 GMT), Melissa was a “catastrophic” storm, the strongest possible on the Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. The NHC expects Melissa to move over Jamaica late Monday or in the early hours of Tuesday, cross eastern Cuba the following night and move over the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos by Wednesday.
In Haiti, impoverished by years of gang violence, more than 3,650 residents in southern parts of the country moved into temporary shelters, authorities said, as they suspended flights to and from the southern peninsula and banned sailing.
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