Santiago De Cuba: People across the northern Caribbean were digging out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa on Thursday
as deaths from the catastrophic storm climbed. The rumble
of large machinery, the whine of chainsaws and the chopping of machetes echoed throughout southeast Jamaica as government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach isolated communities that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record.
Stunned residents wandered about, some staring at their roofless homes and waterlogged belongings strewn around them.
“I don’t have a house now,” said a distressed Sylvester Guthrie, a resident of Lacovia in the southern parish of
St. Elizabeth,as he held
onto his bicycle, the only possession of value left after the storm.