Hurricane Melissa wreaks havoc: Dozens killed, thousands left without home and electricity as Melissa leaves Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and Bahamas reeling; check top updates

Dozens were killed, and a trail of destruction was left behind after Hurricane Melissa struck Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica on Wednesday (October 29, 2025) and churned through the southern part of the Bahamas in the evening.

In Jamaica, roofless homes, toppled utility poles, and waterlogged furniture dominated the landscape on Wednesday, as reported by AP. Things went from bad to worse in the Caribbean after a landslide blocked the main roads of Santa Cruz in Jamaica's St. Elizabeth parish, where the streets were reduced to mud pits.

Residents were left reeling due to Melissa as they swept water from homes, trying to salvage belongings. Wind ripped off part of the roof at a high school that serves as a public shelter. Speaking about the situation, a resident told AP, “I never see anything like this before in all my years living here.”

Hurricane Melissa: Here are key updates as the hurricane Melissa wreaks havoc

The extent of the damage from the deadly hurricane was unclear Wednesday as widespread power outages and dangerous conditions persisted in the region. “It is too early for us to say definitively,” said Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister, as quoted by AP.

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Melissa made landfall Tuesday (October 28, 2025) in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with top winds of 295 kph, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, before weakening and moving on to Cuba, but even countries outside the direct path of the massive storm felt its devastating effects.

The hurricane began churning through the southern part of the Bahamas on Wednesday evening after carving a destructive path through the Caribbean.

In Jamaica, more than 25,000 people were packed into shelters on Wednesday after the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them temporarily homeless. Dixon said 77 percent of the island was without power.

The outages complicated assessing the damage because of “a total communication blackout” in areas, Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica's Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network radio station.

At least 25 people lost their lives across Haiti, and 18 are missing, Haiti's Civil Protection Agency said in a statement Wednesday. According to AP, twenty of those reported dead and 10 of the missing are from a southern coastal town where flooding collapsed dozens of homes. At least eight are dead in Jamaica.

In Cuba, officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads, and roofs blown off buildings on Wednesday, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in the southwest and northwest. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters.

Officials in Black River, Jamaica, a southwestern coastal town of approximately 5,000 people, pleaded for aid at a news conference on Wednesday. “Catastrophic is a mild term based on what we are observing,” Mayor Richard Solomon said, as quoted by AP.

The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X.

St. Elizabeth Police Superintendent Coleridge Minto told Nationwide News Network on Wednesday that authorities have found at least four bodies in southwest Jamaica. One death was reported in the west when a tree fell on a baby, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told Nationwide News Network. Before landfall, Melissa had already been blamed for three deaths in Jamaica, three in Haiti, and one in the Dominican Republic.