Hurricane Beryl pummels Jamaica after ripping through southeast Caribbean

Hurricane Beryl was roaring by Jamaica Wednesday, bringing fierce winds and heavy rain after the powerful Category 4 storm earlier killed at least nine people and caused significant damage in the southeast Caribbean.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Beryl's eyewall was "brushing the south coast of Jamaica."

Wind-whipped rain pounded the island for hours as residents heeded authorities' call to shelter until the storm had passed. Power was knocked out in much of the capital.

WATCH | Beryl hits Jamaica:

Hurricane Beryl sweeps over Jamaica

2 months ago

Duration 0:38

Strong winds and dark clouds from Hurricane Beryl loomed over various parts of Jamaica as strong winds uprooted trees and rains washed out some coastal roads.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on Wednesday afternoon that nearly 500 people were placed in shelters.

"We are placing emphasis on ensuring they are comfortable and well looked after," he said in a social media post.

Before Beryl's arrival in Kingston, people boarded up windows, fishermen pulled their boats out of the water and workers dismantled roadside advertising boards to protect them from the lashing winds.

Kingston resident Pauline Lynch said that she had stockpiled food and water in anticipation of the storm's arrival. With wind already whipping a light rain, Lynch said, "I have no control over what is coming, so I just have to pray that all people of Jamaica is safe and we don't suffer no deaths, no loss."

WATCH | How one resident preparedfor Beryl:

Kingston, Jamaica, resident feeling 'very prepared' as major hurricane approaches

2 months ago

Duration 0:53

Pauline Edie, who lives in Kingston, Jamaica, says she has stocked up on non-perishables ahead of Hurricane Beryl. Edie, who has lived through major storms before, says she's got food, water and family close but shes urging those in less secure situations to head to higher ground.

By midday, winds howled in the capital, turning the sea into churning whitecaps as Beryl's eye scraped by the island's southern coast.

"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica," including storm surge, high winds and flash flooding, said Jon Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather.

Porter called Beryl "the strongest and most dangerous hurricane threat that Jamaica has faced, probably, in decades."

Thomas Haas, a Vancouver manwho was in Montego Bay on Jamaica's northern coast for a family reunion, said the storm's winds increased throughout the morning, but got worse after noon.

"There wasn't much rain at the beginning, it was just increasing winds," Haas told CBC News in an interviewWednesday evening. "And the winds were increasing for the next six hours.

"It was quite intense."

Haas, who was staying in a hotel,said he watched the storm uproot palm trees and tear the roofs offbeach structures. He said he felt safe, but worried about the people in town living in less secure structures.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac. Beryl has been losing intensity but is forecast to still be near major-hurricane strength when it passed near the Cayman Islands on Thursday and into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.

A hurricane watch was in effect for Haiti's southern coast and the Yucatan's east coast. Belize issued a tropical storm watch stretching south from its border with Mexico to Belize City.

Late Monday, Beryl became the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic and peaked at winds of 270 kilometres per hourTuesday before weakening to a still-destructive Category 4.

WATCH | Beryl left 'complete devastation,' saysGrenada's PM:

'Complete devastation': That's how Grenada's PM describes one island's hurricane damage

2 months ago

Duration 1:16

Prime Minister of Grenada Dickon Mitchell spoke Tuesday after Hurricane Beryl ravaged Carriacou, saying the damage was almost 'Armageddon' on this island. The powerful storm devastated everything from mangroves and farms to homes and telecommunications infrastructure.

Beryl was expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica, where officials warned residents in flood-prone areas to prepare for evacuation.

A tropical storm warning was in place for the entire southern coast of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

On Tuesday, the Canadian governmenturged Canadians to avoid travelling to Haiti and other Caribbean nations due to the threat posed by the hurricane.

Jamaica is now under curfew from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.and its international airports areclosed. Three planes chartered on Tuesday by Air Transatto repatriate customers from Montego Bay, due to the storm, arrived in Canada early Wednesday, twoinMontreal and one in Toronto.

WATCH | Destruction on Union Island:

Destroyed homes, shattered infrastructure on Union Island after Hurricane Beryl

2 months ago

Duration 0:28

People on Union Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines were picking through rubble earlier this week after Hurricane Beryl slammed the region, with government officials saying preliminary reports suggest over 90 per cent of the island's infrastructure was damaged.

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) advised Canadians to avoid "all travel" to Haiti as well as "all non-essential travel to the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Union Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and to Carriacou and Petite Martinique in Grenada," in a statement issued Tuesday evening.

According to GAC, there are3,162 Canadians registered in Haiti;1,524 in the Cayman Islands; 1,625 in Jamaica; 236 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and 341 in Grenada.

Trail of devastation

As the storm barrelled through the Caribbean Sea, rescue crews in southeastern islands fanned out to determine the extent of the damage Beryl inflicted on Carriacou, an island in Grenada.

Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Two other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where five people are missing, officials said. Some 25,000 people in that area also were affected by heavy rainfall from Beryl.

On Tuesday night, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro told state television that three people had died and four were missing in the area, along with more than 8,000 homes damaged by torrential rains, including at least 400 destroyed.

Additional confirmed fatalities so far include at least three in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a senior official told Reuters. In Grenada, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell described "Armageddon-like" conditions with no power and widespread destruction, while also confirming three deaths.

"The situation is grim," Mitchell told a news conference Tuesday.

"There is no power, and 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."

One fatality in Grenada occurred after a tree fell on a house, Kerryne James, the environment minister, told The Associated Press.

She said Carriacou and Petit Martinique sustained the greatest damage, with scores of homes and businesses flattened in Carriacou.

Meanwhile, Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said 90 per centof homes on Union Island were destroyed, and that "similar levels of devastation" were expected on the islands of Myreau and Canouan.

The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

Hundreds of people hunkered in shelters across the southeast Caribbean, including 50 adults and 20 children who huddled inside a school in Grenada.