Hurricane Beryl left devastation in southern Jamaica, killing at least two people, downing power lines and leaving hundreds homeless and seeking refuge in evacuation centres across the island nation, before heading towards the Cayman Islands and Mexico on Thursday.
Jamaica police told NBC News that one man and one woman had died in the storm’s aftermath in the past 24 hours, including a 26-year-old man who was swept away by floodwaters in the capital, Kingston, on Wednesday evening.
“He was playing football with friends at the mini stadium when the ball went out and he tried to pick it up,” police said. A search was also on for another man who was swept away by the floodwaters, police added.
This brings the total number of people killed by Beryl in the Caribbean this week to nine.
The storm has now weakened to a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 120 mph, but widespread damage is still expected in the Cayman Islands, with a hurricane warning in effect for Thursday as the eye of the storm moves south of the islands.
Strong winds, storm surges, damaging surf, 4 to 6 inches of rain and flooding are expected in parts of the Cayman Islands, Mexico and Belize starting Thursday night.
Several communities along Mexico’s Caribbean coast were evacuated and sea turtle eggs were removed from the coast before they were destroyed by the storm surge.
Mexican navy officers issued messages in both Spanish and English urging residents in tourist areas to prepare for the coming storm.
Jamaica’s hurricane warning was lifted, but a flood warning was in effect until 5 a.m. ET as heavy rains continued to fall after the storm passed.
“It’s terrible. Everything is gone. I’m scared to be in my house,” Amoy Wellington, 51, a cashier from Top Hill, a rural area in the southern parish of St Elizabeth, told Reuters. “It’s a disaster.”
Honeymooners Casey and Warner Haley, of Knoxville, Tennessee, told NBC News they were told to wait at their Montego Bay resort after their wedding on Saturday.
“The weather was perfect yesterday morning. We went snorkeling and kayaking, but by the time we got back the forecast had changed,” Casey, 23, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
The couple immediately contacted a travel agent, who told them there were no flights available, and were told the same thing at the airport.
“It was literally the end of the world,” Casey said. “We went to every airline counter and said, ‘Can you take us anywhere, especially within the United States, literally anywhere?’ And they all said, ‘No, we’re fully booked.'”
Beryl is expected to reach Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Friday as a Category 2 storm before moving into the southern Gulf of Mexico early Saturday. It’s unclear how it will affect the Texas Gulf coast, but coastal residents are being urged to stay “weather aware” over the holidays.
The National Hurricane Center warned Thursday that the storm could reintensify over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and reach the United States as a hurricane.
“Nearly all model projections indicate Beryl will approach hurricane strength as it approaches the western Gulf Coast, and the official forecast is consistent,” the center said in a statement early Thursday.
The center added that rip currents could cause “life-threatening coastal conditions” along the entire Gulf Coast Friday night into the weekend, regardless of the hurricane’s path.
Damage has been devastating in some of the smaller Caribbean islands: Michelle Forbes, director of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ National Emergency Management Agency, said about 95 percent of homes on Mayreau and Union islands had been damaged or destroyed.
St. Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in a radio interview on Wednesday that rebuilding Union Island would require a “herculean effort.”
