Flooding threat in Jamaica and Haiti from Hurricane Melissa

A strengthening Melissa grew into a Category 4 hurricane and could reach Category 5 status by Sunday night, unleashing torrential rain and threatening to cause catastrophic flooding in the northern Caribbean, including Haiti and Jamaica, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

The weather agency added Melissa is likely to reach the southern coast of Jamaica as a major hurricane late on Monday or Tuesday morning, and urged people on the island to seek shelter immediately.

“Conditions (in Jamaica) are going to go down rapidly today,” Jamie Rhome, the centre’s deputy director, said on Sunday.

“Be ready to ride this out for several days.”

Melissa was centred about 115 miles (185km) south-southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, and about 295 miles (470km) south-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, on Sunday morning. It had maximum sustained winds of 145mph (230kph) and was moving west at 5mph (7kph), the hurricane centre said.

Melissa was expected to drop torrential rains of up to 76cm on Jamaica and southern Hispaniola – Haiti and the Dominican Republic – according to the hurricane centre. Some areas may see as much as 101cm of rain.

It also warned that extensive damage to infrastructure, power and communication outages, and the isolation of communities in Jamaica were to be expected.

Melissa should be near or over Cuba by late on Tuesday, where it could bring up to 30cm of rain, before moving toward the Bahamas later on Wednesday.

Jamaica’s two main airports, the Norman Manley International Airport and the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, were closed by Sunday.

Local officials ordered the evacuation in the seaside community of Old Harbour Bay in the southern parish of St Catherine on Sunday.

The order came after Jamaican officials said at a press conference earlier that they were contemplating enforcement because many residents in flood-prone and low-lying communities were not heeding the advice to seek safer alternative locations.

Evan Thompson, the principal director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, said the storm surge is expected mainly over the southern side of the island.

“There is potential (for) flooding in every parish of our country,” Mr Thompson said.

Some foreign governments are also preparing for the hurricane’s arrival in Jamaica.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda is housing visiting students at a hotel in Kingston. As of Sunday morning, 52 of them had checked in. Students from other islands were staying at the same hotel, though it remained unclear whether they were sponsored by their governments.

The slow-moving storm has killed at least three people in Haiti and a fourth person in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.

Haitian authorities said three people had died as a consequence of the hurricane and another five were injured because of a collapsed wall. There were also reports of rising river levels, flooding and a bridge destroyed due to breached riverbanks in Sainte-Suzanne, in the northeast.

Many residents are still reluctant to leave their homes, Haitian officials said.

The storm damaged nearly 200 homes in the Dominican Republic and knocked out water supply systems, affecting more than half a million customers. It also downed trees and traffic lights, unleashed a couple of small landslides and left more than two dozen communities isolated by floodwaters.

The Bahamas Department of Meteorology said Melissa could bring tropical storm or hurricane conditions to islands in the southeastern and central Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands by early next week.

Melissa is the 13th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted an above-normal season with 13 to 18 named storms.