BRIDGETOWN: Hurricane Beryl moves towards Jamaica as a powerful Category 5 storm on Tuesday after making landfall on smaller Caribbean islands.
The powerful storm affected power lines, bringing floods and reportedly killing two people.
The storm on Monday made landfall on Carriacou Island, where one person was killed, and power was cut throughout the island. Another person was also killed in St Vincent.
Video from Barbados showed waves hitting the shore of the island, damaging walkways, felling trees and flooding roads in the capital Bridgetown.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said that the hurricane has come and gone in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “Union Island (part of the Grenadines archipelago) has been devastated,” he said, with “90% of the houses… severely damaged or destroyed”.
Gonsalves confirmed one person had been killed and that there could be more fatalities.
Beryl is expected to bring 4 to 12 inches of rainfall to Jamaica on Wednesday, possibly causing flash floods, said the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Jamaica issued a hurricane warning on Monday, while tropical storm warnings were in effect for parts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The catastrophic storm hit the Caribbean region earlier on Tuesday as a Category 4 storm and was likely to bring life-threatening winds and a storm surge to Jamaica.
While it has converted into a 5 on a five-point scale, it was expected to become less intense later, the NHC said. Beryl’s is expected to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Thursday.
Officials in Mexico have started to prepare for Beryl’s arrival later this week, with the federal government asking authorities and citizens to show extreme caution.
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