As Hurricane Beryl bore down on Jamaica on Wednesday, the islands in its wake were getting a clearer picture of the destruction the record-setting storm left behind in the southeastern Caribbean.
“It is almost Armageddon-like, almost total damage or destruction of all buildings whether they be public buildings, homes or other private facilities,” said Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell after a helicopter survey on Tuesday. “Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture. Complete and total destruction of the natural environment; there is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou.”
The storm has already been blamed for at least four deaths in the eastern Caribbean where two people died on the island of Carriacou, another in mainland Grenada and another in Union Island, a sister island to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The toll is expected to climb there and Beryl’s passage along the Jamaican coastline could add to it. The storm is packing not just 145-mph winds but up to nine feet of storm surge.
Mitchell said the devastation is worse than he and others previously thought.
“It is clear that agriculture has taken quite a battering. It is clear that many persons have lost their roofs…many people have lost their entire homes,” Mitchell said about mainland Grenada, which also took a beating. “But the destruction in Grenada. even in St. Patrick, which is extensive, is of almost no significance, compared to the total destruction that Hurricane Beryl has brought to the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique.”
It is now estimated that only two percent of the buildings and homes there survived — 98 percent have been destroyed or severely damaged.
Beyond the immediate housing crisis, Mitchell said the electrical grid system and communication systems had been destroyed. “As of this moment, communication is still a major problem,” he said late Tuesday.
Despite the dire circumstances, Mitchell said things have started to move. Volunteers have started to give their time, dropped off supplies and offered their boats freely to get supplies to the two sister islands.
“This is going to be a mammoth task to rebuild Carriacou and Petite Martinique, but we are committed to doing so” Mitchell said.
