Cachella Smith and
Will Grant,in Kingston
EPA/ShutterstockA flight chartered by the UK government to evacuate British nationals from Jamaica in the wake of Hurricane Melissa has landed at Gatwick Airport.
The flight, which left Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport on Saturday, comes after the UK flew in aid as part of a £7.5m regional emergency package.
Some of the funding will be used to match public donations up to £1m to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent – with King Charles and Queen Camilla among those to have donated.
Despite aid arriving in Jamaica in recent days, blocked roads have complicated distribution after Melissa devastated parts of the island, killing at least 28 people.
Melissa swept across the region over a number of days, leaving behind a trail of destruction and dozens of people dead. In Haiti, at least 31 people were killed, while Cuba also saw flooding and landslides.
Jamaica’s Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon said on Friday “there are entire communities that seem to be marooned and areas that seem to be flattened”.
Around 8,000 British nationals were thought to have been on the island when the hurricane hit.
The UK Foreign Office has asked citizens there to register their presence and advised travellers to contact their airline to check whether commercial options were available.
The UK initially set aside a £2.5m immediate financial support package for the region, with an additional £5m announced by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Friday as “more information… on the scale of the devastation” emerged.
The British Red Cross said the King and Queen’s donation would help the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) “continue its lifesaving work” – which includes search and rescue efforts in Jamaica as well as ensuring access to healthcare, safe shelter and clean water.
The Red Cross said that 72% of people across Jamaica still do not have electricity and around 6,000 are in emergency shelters.
Until the Jamaican government can get the broken electricity grid back up and running, any generators aid agencies can distribute will be vital.
So too will tarpaulins, given the extent of the housing crisis.
Meanwhile, with so many in need of clean drinking water and basic food, patience is wearing thin and there are more reports of desperate people entering supermarkets to gather and give out whatever food they can find.
The BBC has seen queues for petrol pumps, with people waiting for hours to then be told there is no fuel left when they reach the front of the queue.
Some people are seeking fuel for generators, others to drive to an area where they can contact people, with the power down across most of the island.
AFP via Getty ImagesThe country’s health minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, described “significant damage” across a number of hospitals on Saturday – with the Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth being the most severely affected.
“That facility will have to be for now totally relocated in terms of services,” he said. “The immediate challenge of the impacted hospitals is to preserve accident and emergency services.”
Dr Tufton added: “What we’re seeing is that a lot of people are coming in now to these facilities with trauma-related [injuries] from falls from the roof, to ladders, to nails penetrating their feet.”
The minister said arrangements had been made for the ongoing supply of fuel to the facilities as well as a daily supply of water.
Landslides, downed power lines and fallen trees have made certain roads impassable – complicating the distribution of aid across the island.
However, some of the worst affected areas of Jamaica should finally receive some relief by Sunday.
At least one aid organisation, Global Empowerment Mission, rolled out from Kingston on Saturday with a seven-truck convoy heading to Black River, the badly damaged town in western Jamaica, carrying packs of humanitarian assistance put together by volunteers from the Jamaican diaspora community in Florida.
Help is also coming in from other aid groups and foreign governments via helicopter.
It remains only a small part of what the affected communities need but authorities insist more is coming soon.
Melissa – the strongest hurricane so far this year – made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, with sustained winds of up to 185mph (295km/h).
A category five storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale is the strongest kind, with wind speeds in excess of 157mph, making hurricanes of this strength capable of catastrophic destruction.