Four dead as category 5 Hurricane Beryl wreaks havoc across Caribbean
At least four people have died as Hurricane Beryl wreaked “almost complete destruction” on small and vulnerable islands in the Caribbean.
The monster hurricane, which is now barrelling towards Jamaica, has strengthened to category 5 status, which means it can achieve wind speeds of over 157mph (253km/h).
Described by the US National Hurricane Center as “catastrophic” and “life-threatening”, Beryl left a trail of “utter devastation” in Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
According to early reports from the two multi-island nations, hundreds of buildings, including homes, schools, hospitals and police stations, have been badly damaged or completely destroyed.
At least 90% of building structures are believed to be affected in the Grenadine island of Union, part of SVG.
There is also a country-wide electricity blackout, and Beryl has severely affected communication and transportation channels, leading to difficulties in assessing the true impact of the devastation on some islands.
“The situation is grim,” Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told Grenadians as he gave an update on the Grenadian islands of Caricou and Petit Martinique early on Tuesday.
“There is no power, there is almost complete destruction of homes and buildings on the island. The roads are not passable, and in many instances, they are cut off because of the large quantity of debris strewn all over the streets.”
“In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Mitchell told a press conference late on Monday.
On social media, the prime minister said the government was working to get relief supplies to both Carriacou and the island of Petite Martinique on Tuesday. “The state of emergency is still in effect. Remain indoors,” he wrote on Facebook.
In St Vincent and the Grenadines, the prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, spoke about the “pain and suffering” across the nations and praised the resilience of the Vincentian people. He told reporters: “Hurricane Beryl has come and gone and has left in its wake immense destruction.
“The faces of our men and women are strained and anxious. But tomorrow, we get up with the conviction to rebuild our individual lives and our family’s lives. To rebuild our country, to recover.”
Beryl ripped off doors, windows and roofs in homes across the south-eastern Caribbean on Monday after making landfall on the island of Carriacou in Grenada as the earliest category 4 storm in the Atlantic in recorded history, fuelled by record warm waters.
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From St Lucia island south to Grenada, the streets were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and other debris. Banana trees were snapped in half and cows lay dead in green pastures with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.
Late on Monday, Beryl’s winds increased to 160mph (260km/h). Fluctuations in strength were likely in the coming days.
Beryl is pushing into the Caribbean Sea on a track heading just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula by late Thursday as a category 1 storm.
Early on Tuesday, the storm was located about 300 miles (485km) south-east of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic. It had top winds of 165mph (270km/h) and was moving west-north-west at 22mph (35km/h).
“Beryl remains an impressive category 5 hurricane,” the National Hurricane Center said.
A tropical storm warning was in place for the entire southern coast of Hispaniola, an island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Beryl gained its strength from record warm waters that are hotter now than they would be at the peak of hurricane season in September, according to meteorologists who say the hotter water temperatures are a result of the global climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed reporting