We're feeling hopelessness

Hurricane Melissa became the strongest storm ever to hit Jamaica last month, destroying communities and ravaging the country's economy. Aid organisations tell Alex Croft and Bryony Gooch how the rebuild will be long and painful

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As Hurricane Melissa ripped through Jamaica, Rohan Marley received a call from a close friend living in Black River on the southwest coast of the island.

“He was showing me the winds that were coming and he was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this,’” he tells The Independent from his home in Miami.

Mr Marley, who is the son of iconic musician Bob Marley, immediately began to worry. Within hours, the storm had reduced the sleepy town of Black River to rubble.

“It’s the aftermath you worry about, because of the lack of light, [and] accessibility to water, food and normal resources that people don’t have on a daily basis,” he said.

Hurricane Melissa became the strongest storm to ever hit Jamaica when it made landfall on 28 October. As a category 5 hurricane, it surpassed the power of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which itself caused widespread damage.

Residents were forced to seek shelter as gales of 185mph tore through the western side of the Caribbean island. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that every building in Black River in St Elizabeth, the largest parish in Jamaica, had been destroyed.

At least 32 people died in Jamaica as a result of the storm and another 43 fatalities were reported in nearby Haiti, where 13 others remain missing.

A financial hole to fill

The hurricane has caused unprecedented damage to Jamaica’s economy. On Tuesday, prime minister Andrew Holness said that damage to homes and key infrastructure was roughly equivalent to 28 to 32 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product last year.