Caribbean nations reeling in Melissa’s aftermath

Cleanup efforts begin in Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica. Death toll is expected to increase.

- By ARIEL FERNANDEZ, ANDREA RODRIGUEZ AND JOHN Myers JR.

HAITIANS navigate floodwaters Thursday in Petit-Goave, where Hurricane Melissa left at least 20 dead.

(CLARENS SIFFROY AFP/Getty Images)

The rumble of large machinery, whine of chain saws and chopping of machetes echoed through communities across the northern Caribbean on Thursday as they dug out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and surveyed the damage left behind.

In Jamaica, government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach dozens of isolated communities in the island’s southeast that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.

Stunned residents wandered about, some staring at their roofless homes and waterlogged _ belongings strewn around them.

“I don’t have a house now,” said Sylvester Guthrie, a resident of Lacovia in the southern parish of St. Elizabeth, as he held on to his bicycle, the only possession of value left after the storm.

Emergency relief flights began landing at Jamaica’s main international airport, which reopened _late Wednesday, as crews distributed water, medicine and other basic supplies. Helicopters dropped food as they thrummed above communities where the storm flattened homes, wiped out roads and destroyed bridges, cutting them off from assistance.

“The entire Jamaica is really broken because of what has happened,” Education Minister Dana Morris Dixon said.

Authorities said they have found at least four bodies in southwestern Jamaica.

Desmond = McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council, declined to provide an update on the number of deaths, saying only that he expects the numbertoincrease based on information he has received.