Hurricane Beryl has ripped off roofs in Jamaica, pummeled fishing boats in Barbados, and destroyed 95% of dwellings on two islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines before moving on to the Cayman Islands and Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
So far, the storm has claimed the lives of at least seven people.
The storm that was the first to become a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic has weakened dramatically but remains a major hurricane. Its eye was expected to pass south of the Cayman Islands overnight.
Mexico’s popular Caribbean coast constructed shelters, evacuated some small outlying coastal villages, and even relocated sea turtle eggs from beaches threatened by storm surge, but tourists in nightlife destinations such as Playa del Carmen and Tulum nevertheless enjoyed one more night out.
The Mexican navy monitored places such as Tulum, warning tourists in Spanish and English to prepare for the storm’s arrival.
Early Thursday morning, the storm’s center was around 500 kilometers east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico.
It had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and was traveling west-northwest at 21 mph.
Beryl was forecast to make landfall early Friday morning in a sparsely populated area of lagoons and mangroves south of Tulum, most possibly as a Category 2 storm.
Then it is expected to cross the Yucatan Peninsula and strengthen over the warm Gulf of Mexico before striking again on Mexico’s northeast coast near the Texas border.
The storm has already demonstrated its devastating capability across a large portion of the south-eastern Caribbean.
Beryl’s eye wall brushed across Jamaica’s southern coast Wednesday afternoon, knocking out power and ripping roofs off houses.
According to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Jamaica has not witnessed the worst of what could possibly happen.
According to the government’s Information Service, fallen trees and utility poles disrupted several routes in Jamaica’s interior towns, and some communities in the northern region went without power.
The worst may have occurred earlier in Beryl’s track, when it collided with two small Lesser Antilles islands.
Michelle Forbes, the St Vincent and Grenadines director of the National Emergency Management Organisation, said that about 95% of homes in Mayreau and Union Island have been damaged by Hurricane Beryl.
Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said.
Three other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where four people are missing, officials added.
St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has promised to rebuild the archipelago.
