[Source: Reuters]

Deadly Hurricane Beryl churns toward Jamaica, causes ‘immense destruction’

Hurricane Beryl barreled toward Jamaica as a powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday after battering smaller islands in the eastern Caribbean, and scientists cited human-caused climate change as the likely culprit for the storm’s rapid strengthening.

The unusually early hurricane felled power lines and unleashed flash floods. It has so far claimed at least three lives.

Beryl, the 2024 Atlantic season’s first hurricane and the earliest storm on record to reach the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, hit St. Vincent and the Grenadines especially hard, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

Late on Monday, Beryl was at Category 5 strength, but weakened slightly on Tuesday.

“The hurricane has come and gone, and it has left in its wake immense destruction,” he said. On one island in the Grenadines archipelago, Union Island, 90% of homes had been “severely damaged or destroyed,” he added.

The prime minister confirmed one death, and said more fatalities could be confirmed in the coming days.

In a video briefing on Tuesday, Grenada’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, stressed that Carriacou and Petite Martinique, two of the three islands that make up the country, bore the brunt of the natural disaster.

“The situation is grim. There is no power. There is almost complete destruction of homes and buildings,” he said, citing impassable roads due to downed power lines and destroyed fuel stations crimping supplies.

Mitchell said at least two deaths were attributed to the impact of Beryl so far.

The hurricane, packing maximum sustained winds of 155 miles per hour (249 kph), is currently located about 485 miles (781 km) east-southeast of the Jamaican capital of Kingston, according to an advisory from the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) on Tuesday.

The NHC estimates that the massive weather system is moving toward the west-northwest at a speed of 22 mph (35 kph).