Driving through western Jamaica, it’s staggering how wide Hurricane Melissa’s field of destruction is.
Town after town, miles apart, where trees have been uprooted and roofs peeled back. Some homes are now just a pile of rubble, and we still don’t know how deadly this storm has been, although authorities warn the death toll will likely rise.
A total of 49 people have died in Melissa’s charge across the Caribbean – 19 in Jamaica alone.
My team and I headed from Kingston airport, towards where the hurricane made landfall, referred to as “ground zero” of this crisis.
On the way, it’s clear that so many communities here have been brought to their knees and so many people are desperate for help.
We drive under a snarl of mangled power lines and over huge piles of rocks before reaching the town of Lacovia in Saint Elizabeth Parish.
At the side of the road, beside a battered and sodden primary school, a woman wearing a red shirt and black tracksuit bottoms holds a handwritten sign in the direction of passing cars.
“Help needed at this shelter,” it says. The woman’s name is Sheree McLeod, and she is an admin assistant at the school.
She is in charge of a makeshift shelter in the school, a temporary home for at least 16 people between the ages of 14 and 86.
I stop and ask what she needs and almost immediately she begins to cry.
‘No emergency teams’
“I’ve never seen this in my entire life,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking, I never thought in a million years that I would be in the situation trying to get help and with literally no communication.
“We can’t reach any officials, there are no emergency teams. I’m hoping and praying that help can reach us soon.
“The task of a shelter manager is voluntary and the most I can do is just ask for help in whatever way possible.”
Read more:
Before and after images show hurricane’s destruction
What we know from the ground following the devastation
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Sheree shows me the classroom where she and 15 other people rode out the hurricane which she says hung over the town for hours.
They had just a sheet of tarpaulin against the window shutters to try to repel gusts of more than 170mph and a deluge of rain.
They took a white board off the wall to try to get more shelter.
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“It was very terrible,” Sheree says. “We were given eight blankets for the shelter and that was it, but there were 16 people.
“Now all their clothes and blankets that they were provided with got damaged. Some people are sleeping in chairs and on wooden desks.”
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Her plea for help is echoed across this part of Jamaica.
As we’re filming a pile of wooden slats that used to be a house, a passing motorcyclist shouts: “Send help, Jamaica needs help now.”
The relief effort is intensifying. After I leave Sheree, a convoy of army vehicles speed past in the direction of Black River, the town at the epicentre of this disaster.
Diggers work to clear debris from the road late into the night. Ambulance sirens also grow more regular as the day goes on.
Help is coming and for many here, it can’t come soon enough.
