Story

One Storm, One People, One Love: Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa

26 November 2025

Caption: James, 73, describes the impact of Hurricane Melissa on his home and community in Watercress, Jamaica, where residents are still in need of food, water and construction materials a week after the storm.

Photo: © OCHA/Marc Belanger

One month on from the devastation of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, the resilience of the island's people is shown amidst the UN-supported humanitarian response.

When Hurricane Melissa tore through the Caribbean in late October, it left Jamaica’s south-west coast shattered, claiming 45 lives and affecting almost 1.6 million people. From Savanna-la-Mar to Black River, the devastating storm splintered trees, ripped off roofs and brought down walls as winds surged past 250 km per hour.

“Even large structures couldn’t stand up to it,” said Rogerio Mobilia, who led the OCHA team that quickly deployed to Jamaica. “Communities look like a war zone – people walking through the rubble trying to find where their homes once were.”

Caption: Kemeisha, 45, stands where her home once stood before Hurricane Melissa swept it away. She says the storm was not only worse than Beryl in 2024 but even more powerful than Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Determined to rebuild, she plans to construct her new house entirely from concrete to better withstand future storms.

Photo: © OCHA/Marc Belanger

In Watercress, Westmoreland Parish, the winds flattened nearly every home and stripped the hillsides bare. Kemeisha, 45, stood beside what used to be her home.

“I remember Gilbert,” she said, recalling the legendary 1988 hurricane that struck when she was a child. “But this? Nothing like it. Everything’s gone. Now eight of us staying at my sister’s place, a little one-room that was also damaged.”

At Savanna-la-Mar’s Sir Clifford Campbell Primary School, groundskeeper Trevolyn, 57, walked through the yard where pieces of roofing lay scattered. “Devastating, man. Real hard,” he said, shaking his head.

"People still in shelter, they don’t go home as yet because the whole construction of them building blow right down. We haven’t seen any of the students since.”

Caption: Junior, a resident of Greenwich Town, Jamaica.

Photo: © OCHA/Marc Belanger.

The hurricane destroyed more than 450 schools across Jamaica. Many are still without power or safe classrooms to return to.

“Infrastructure, homes, livelihoods – everything has been affected,” said Dennis Zulu, the UN Resident Coordinator in Jamaica. “We’re working with the Government and partners to respond and help Jamaica recover from this unprecedented devastation.”

The west bore the brunt of Melissa’s category 5 winds, but the hurricane’s reach was national. In Hellshire and Greenwich Town, near the capital, Kingston, years of erosion from past hurricanes left fishing families exposed as Melissa battered seafood stalls and wrecked docks.

“My roof is gone,” said Junior, 67, speaking with regional assessment teams from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). “I have to either fix that or my fishing gear to keep providing.”

The massive response from the Government of Jamaica, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, CDEMA, the Jamaica Defence Force, the Jamaica Red Cross, UN agencies, international non-governmental organizations and faith-based groups reflects the solidarity and scale of effort, and the coordination required to work together.

Caption: Brenda Eriksen, OCHA Information Management Officer at the Kingston-based coordination hub.

“There’s an influx of partners supporting the response,” said Brenda Eriksen, OCHA Information Management Officer. “There’s a lot of information, so we’re working to understand where they are, what they’re doing and what they’re observing, to see where there may be gaps in response.”

Working with the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team and standby partners MapAction and Atlas Logistique, OCHA first set up a Kingston-based coordination hub. It then lay the groundwork for a field coordination hub in western Jamaica, mapped access constraints and cut-off communities, and convened sector working groups.

Scientists say climate change is fuelling the devastation that communities now face. Research from World Weather Attribution and Imperial College London found that storms as intense as Hurricane Melissa are now several times more likely in the Caribbean’s warmer climate.

Caption: Charmaine, whose home in Jamaica was destroyed by Hurricane Melissa, is now in a shelter. Despite the hardship and uncertainty about recovery, Charmaine calls her situation a blessing, knowing others in her community are facing even greater losses.

Photo: © OCHA/Marc Belanger

Melissa’s timing is striking – the UN Climate Change Conference, COP30, is taking place in Brazil as the world inches closer to breaching the 1.5°C warming limit, and as the need for adaptation and climate finance for countries on the front lines grows more urgent.

Some of the more fortunate communities are beginning to piece back their lives.

Charmaine, 56, works at a small Savanna-la-Mar hotel. She lost her home and now shares a room with eight coworkers. “We are grateful because we still have something,” she said. “But everybody got hit, some worse than others. Some people are just recovering from [Hurricane] Beryl, so there’s no easy fix.”

The OCHA-managed UN Global Emergency Fund (CERF) allocated US$4 million to scale up life-saving assistance in coordination with the Government and partners.

In Watercress, Loi stood beside the wreckage of her small roadside bar, now picked over for anything salvageable. She spoke of the desperation driving people to search the debris for supplies, but she was focused on rebuilding.