Tag: caribbean

Jamaica rushes to pre­pare for peak tour­ism sea­son

Hotels are work­ing on repairs after storm dev­ast­ated island

This article was written by John Myers, Jr. and was published in the Toronto Star on November 9, 2025.

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA Jamaica’s peak tour­ism sea­son is one month away, and offi­cials in the hur­ricane­ rav­aged nation are rush­ing to rebuild from the cata­strophic Cat­egory 5 storm that shred­ded the island’s west­ern region.

Before Hur­ricane Melissa hit on Oct. 28, the gov­ern­ment expec­ted Jamaica’s tour­ism industry to grow by seven per cent this winter sea­son and was pre­par­ing to wel­come an estim­ated 4.3 mil­lion vis­it­ors.

Now, offi­cials are scram­bling to repair hotels and clear debris in the west­ern half of the island in hopes of secur­ing tour­ist dol­lars at a moment when they’re most needed.

“We are still doing our assess­ments, but most of the dam­age was in the north­w­est and south­w­est,” said Chris­topher Jar­rett, who leads the Jamaica Hotel and Tour­ist Asso­ci­ation. He noted that the pop­u­lar Negril area in West­mo­re­land was spared major dam­age.

All inter­na­tional air­ports in Jamaica have reopened and are receiv­ing com­mer­cial flights. But almost a week after one of the most power­ful Atlantic hur­ricanes on record struck the west­ern end of Jamaica, tour­ism offi­cials were still try­ing to get a true pic­ture of the dam­age to the sec­tor — a main­stay of the island’s eco­nomy.

Jar­rett said the lobby group that rep­res­ents private hotels and attrac­tions on the island is still unable to reach many of its mem­bers, espe­cially in the west­ern par­ish of Han­over, as com­mu­nic­a­tion and elec­tri­city ser­vices were down.

“Every indi­vidual mem­ber who was affected is doing everything to get back up and run­ning,” he said.

In recent days, Tour­ism Min­is­ter Edmund Bart­lett said he expec­ted Jamaica’s tour­ism sec­tor to be back to nor­mal by Dec. 15, the start of the island’s peak tour­ism sea­son.

“It’s doable for some and not for oth­ers,” Jar­rett said of the timeline, point­ing out that the lar­ger hotel chains would be able to recover quicker.

Jar­rett, who oper­ates the fam­ily­owned Alta­mont Court Hotel that has prop­er­ties in King­ston and Mon­t­ego Bay, said only one prop­erty in Mon­t­ego Bay sus­tained roof dam­age and that repairs were under­way.

Des­pite the dis­rup­tion to the import­ant tour­ism sec­tor, Jar­rett said he doesn’t expect the eco­nomic fal­lout to be sig­ni­fic­ant. He said many hotels in the cap­ital of King­ston and in the north­ern coastal town of Ocho Rios were gain­ing busi­ness from the influx of aid work­ers and volun­teers in the storm’s after­math.

“Right now, we’re giv­ing dis­counts, between 25 per cent and 50 per cent, and some (hotels) are giv­ing com­pli­ment­ary stays as well,” Jar­rett said.

Tour­ism is Jamaica’s main source of for­eign exchange earn­ings, con­trib­ut­ing a com­bined 30 per cent to gross domestic product dir­ectly and indir­ectly. It employs an estim­ated 175,000 people.

MATIAS DELACROIX/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Res­id­ents walk in Lacovia Tomb­stone, Jamaica, in the after­math of Hur­ricane Melissa last month.

Storm’s toll

Hur­ricane Melissa leaves dozens dead, miss­ing in Carib­bean

Residents walk through Lacovia Tombstone, Jamaica, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa on Wednesday. More than 77 per cent of the country is now without electricity and more than 25,000 people are in shelters across the island, authorities said.

This article was written by Jason Miller and Abby O’Brien, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 30, 2025.

At least 25 people are dead in Haiti and more than a dozen are miss­ing after a river in the town of PetitGoâve, south­w­est of Port­auPrince, flooded while Jamaica picked up the pieces, with local author­it­ies call­ing early images of the power­ful Cat­egory 5 storm after­math dev­ast­at­ing.

Emmanuel Pierre, the head of the Haitian Office of Civil Pro­tec­tion, told the Miami Her­ald that the deaths occurred after the Digue River flooded the town, wash­ing away homes and bury­ing them under mud. “It’s an area where we had vis­ited try­ing to get people to evac­u­ate, but they did not want to leave,” Pierre said.

Three storm­related deaths were con­firmed while Melissa was still a trop­ical storm as it approached the coun­try’s south­ern pen­in­sula.

Of those who washed away in the flooded river, 10 were chil­dren. Sev­en­teen people were injured.

Hur­ricane Melissa has left at least 34 dead in the Carib­bean.

There have been no repor­ted deaths or life­threat­en­ing injur­ies among the roughly 25,000 vis­it­ors, includ­ing the estim­ated 2,024 Cana­dians’ known to be in Jamaica, said Tour­ism Min­is­ter Edmund Bart­lett, adding that one tour­ist was treated in hos­pital for a stroke and there were a few who sus­tained lacer­a­tions as the trop­ical storm poun­ded Jamaica Tues­day after­noon.

“They’re all safe,” Bart­lett told the Star Wed­nes­day morn­ing about the con­di­tion of for­eign­ers who were hunkered down in hotels and other types of accom­mod­a­tions, in sev­eral key tour­ist zones such as Mon­t­ego Bay, Negril and Fal­mouth, when the storm hit the island nation at Cat­egory 5 force, never before seen in Jamaica’s recor­ded his­tory. “We’ve not had any (tour­ist) cas­u­al­ties.”

More than 77 per cent of the coun­try is now without elec­tri­city and in excess of 25,000 people are in shel­ters across the island, said Jamaican author­it­ies Wed­nes­day, as gov­ern­ment lead­ers star­ted ini­tial assess­ments to get a clearer pic­ture of the full extent of the dam­age. Pub­lic works teams are already out clear­ing blocked road­ways.

“Our hous­ing stock has taken a ser­i­ous bat­ter­ing,” Bart­lett said of dam­age to local com­munit­ies. “There was quite a bit of dev­ast­a­tion in terms of util­it­ies.”

Scar­bor­ough res­id­ent Rhondanee Thel­well said she made phone con­tact, Wed­nes­day morn­ing, with rel­at­ives in the coastal com­munity of Bel­mont, West­mo­re­land, where the eye of the hur­ricane made land­fall Tues­day. “Bel­mont is flattened. Roofs have been torn off the homes, and many homes have been des­troyed. It’s all gone.”

Thel­well, 42, who grew up in West­mo­re­land before immig­rat­ing to Canada, said “there has been total dev­ast­a­tion,” in Bel­mont and “hun­dreds of fam­il­ies are affected.”

Thel­well was only able to get bits of detail before los­ing phone con­tact with her fam­ily Wed­nes­day.

She said many of her fam­ily mem­bers will now have to find altern­at­ive accom­mod­a­tions.

“It’s going to be over­whelm­ing,” she said of the recov­ery, adding that she’s plan­ning to visit Jamaica to assist with the rebuild.

Chey­anne Robertson was in Mon­t­ego Bay, cel­eb­rat­ing her hon­ey­moon with her hus­band, Ash­ley, when Melissa hit.

Around 6 a.m. on Tues­day, the couple was ushered into an amphi­theatre inside the resort with at least 100 other guests to weather the storm. They weren’t able to see the dev­ast­a­tion, but could hear the down­pour and howl­ing wind, Robertson said on Wed­nes­day.

When they came out more than 12 hours later, the dam­age was clear. The winds had stripped roofs off nearby build­ings. Cabanas, once cemen­ted to the ground, were strewn across the prop­erty. Dozens of palm trees that dec­or­ated the resort’s beaches were stripped bare.

“I can’t ima­gine what it’s like throughout the whole coun­try,” Robertson said.

Lisa and Evan Winslow, both 37, are vis­it­ing Jamaica for the first time, and the couple from just out­side of Thun­der Bay, are tak­ing everything in stride.

“We’re in good spir­its,” said Evan. The couple is stay­ing at the Prin­cess Senses The Man­grove, which is not far from Negril. They saw 150 km/h winds com­ing in last night and huge rolling waves, but since the resort is a newer build, dam­age has been lim­ited to glass on walk­ways and trees that have been uprooted. It was the first trip for the couple in 13 years, and the first away from their two chil­dren. They have kept in touch every­day so that every­one at home knows they are OK.

Author­it­ies had pre­vi­ously repor­ted that three Jamaican cit­izens were killed, includ­ing one per­son killed by elec­tro­cu­tion, while they were pre­par­ing for the storm to make land­fall.

Bart­lett said work is already under­way to get both inter­na­tional air­ports oper­a­tional, with the expect­a­tion that King­ston’s Nor­man Man­ley Inter­na­tional Air­port would resume flights as early as Thursday.

Cubans still without power as Oscar hits

This article was written by Andrea Rodriguez and Milexsy Duran, and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 21, 2024.

A man sits on a sidewalk on Sunday as Cuba suffers a third major setback in restoring power to the island. Millions in Havana were still in the dark Sunday with people lined up for hours to buy bread from the few bakeries that remained open.

Most of Havana remained in the dark Sunday as the hurricane bore down on the island’s coast

Many Cubans waited in anguish late Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after an islandwide blackout. Their concerns were raised as Hurricane Oscar first made landfall in the southeastern Bahamas and then slammed into Cuba’s coast.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hopes the country’s electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.

But he recognized that Oscar, which hit the island’s eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery since it will touch a “region of strong [electricity] generation.” Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguin, and Rente in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.

Some neighbourhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where two million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.

People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.

In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of “desperation.”

The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island’s whole system, was just the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day.

People lined up for hours on Sunday morning to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.

Some Cubans like Rosa Rodriguez have been without electricity for four days.

“We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.”

About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after one of the plants failed.

Besides the Antonio Guiteras plant, whose failure on Friday affected the entire national system, Cuba has several others, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether they remained functional.

The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst in two years after Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.

Cuba’s government had said on Saturday that some electricity had been restored after one of the country’s major power plants failed. But the 500 megawatts of energy in the island’s electricity grid, far short of the usual three gigawatts it needs, had quickly decreased to 370 megawatts.

Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis, Friday’s collapse was massive.

The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and cancelling non-essential services.

Local authorities said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and mediumsized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.

Cuba’s Energy Minister said the country’s grid would be in better shape if there had not been two more partial blackouts as authorities tried to reconnect on Saturday. Mr. De la O Levy also said Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Russia, among other nations, had offered to help.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Cuba’s eastern coast after striking the southeastern Bahamas earlier in the day.

The hurricane centre in Miami said the storm’s centre arrived in the Cuban province of Guantanamo on Sunday evening with maximum sustained winds near 130 kilometres an hour.

The system is expected to move across eastern Cuba Sunday night and Monday. Forecasters said six to 12 inches (15.2 to 30.5 centimetres) of rain are expected across eastern Cuba through early Wednesday, with some isolated locations getting up to 18 inches (45.72 centimetres). A storm surge of up to three feet (0.91 metres) in some areas of Cuba’s north shore in the area was possible, the centre said.

Oscar was expected to weaken over eastern Cuba before making a turn to the northeast and approaching the central Bahamas on Tuesday, the centre said.

The storm’s centre was located about 10 kilometres east-southeast of Baracoa, or about 80 kilometres east-northeast of Guantanamo. It was heading west-southwest at 11 kilometres an hour.