MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica — More video is emerging showing the total devastation of northwestern Jamaica in the wake of the historic Category 5 Hurricane Melissa after it tore through the island nation.
Drone video showed a soccer stadium in town covered in water and mud — a scene common throughout the surrounding Catherine Hall neighborhoods. Storm surge buried the town in water and mud feet deep, pushed in off the beaches from the 100+ mph winds.
Hurricane Melissa Damage
(FOX Weather)
The bulk of the water has since retreated into the Caribbean, but a thick, grimy film of muddy water remains clinging to roads, yards and even the lower floors of many homes — many also sustaining heavy wind and flood damage.
On the ground, FOX Weather correspondent Robert Ray and producer Jarrod Maloney were escorted around the Catherine Hall neighborhood as residents tried to come to grips with the destruction.
FOX Weather Correspondent Robert Ray is in the heart of a devastated Montego Bay, Jamaica showing residents struggling to cope with their homes and neighborhoods in ruins after Hurricane Melissa.
“There’s frustrations on the street,” Ray said.
Ray walked down a mud-filled side road to find homes still under several inches of mud and water, if not more.
“We need help! We need help, please to clear our roads,” one woman exasperatedly pleaded. She walked in her front door to show the still puddles of mud shin deep in her entryway.
In another nearby home, a resident pointed out the dark horizontal line about 6 feet off the ground adorned on their brightly colored teal blue wall.
“That’s where the water was,” the resident exclaimed.
Another woman told Ray she rescued three children who were tossed over a wall to her during the storm.
“The water was rising and (the parents) wanted to stay in the flood,” she said. “I took the kids, they’re at my house now, I don’t know where the parents are.” She said the kids are OK.
Another woman brought Ray into her home, filled with mud and water-soaked furniture tossed about the room.
Hurricane Melissa Damage
(FOX Weather)
“(Damage to) washing machines, freezers; we lost all our meat,” the woman told Ray. “We have no food and water. That’s one of the biggest things — if we can get some food and water right now, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t have running water, it’s crazy.”
Maloney said every person they’ve spoken with said Melissa was by far the worst storm they have ever seen – even worse than the deadly Hurricane Gilbert of 1988.
“It was the longest 7-hour disaster movie of my life,” one resident told Maloney. Another said, “This was three-times (as bad as) Gilbert.”
Drone video of Hurricane Melissa Damage in Montego Bay, Jamaica
(FOX Weather)
Ray said there are some 800 homes and apartments in the neighborhood all suffering damage.
“This is going to be an incredibly long recovery,” Ray said. “They need to get power restored, they need food and water and other resources.”
