HAMMERED!

NEW YORK:

Jamaicans in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee in the United States appeared to have escaped the worst of Hurricane Helene with only reports of flooding, loss of power and minor property damage up to late Saturday evening.

Jamaica’s consul general to Miami, Oliver Mair, who has responsibility for the states affected by the massive hurricane, told The Sunday Gleaner that he has received no reports of loss of life among Jamaicans.

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140 mph (225 kph), leaving hundreds homeless as the fierce winds and flooding destroyed homes. At least 11 deaths were attributed to the storm in the Sunshine State.

“I spoke with Jamaicans in Tampa Bay, Panama City, Fort Myers and Tallahassee [across Florida] and all the reports are of some flooding, minor property damage by downed trees, and loss of power,” Mair said on Saturday.

From Florida, Helene quickly moved through Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp said Saturday that it “looks like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air. Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was isolated because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads.

CLIMBING death toll

Deaths have also been reported in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, with an overall death toll in the US of at least 64.

The hurricane left several villages under water and hundreds of roads closed due to flooding.

Mair told The Sunday Gleaner that apart from the hurricane, several Jamaicans also had to contend with tornadoes, resulting in many having to pull off the roads to seek shelter.

There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop on Friday.

And the rescues continued into Saturday in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where parts of Asheville remained under water.

Asheville, North Carolina’s largest mountain city where several Jamaicans also reside, remained isolated on Saturday by damaged roads and a lack of power and cellphone service, part of the swath of destruction across southern Appalachia that left an unknown number dead and countless worried relatives unable to reach loved ones.

“We have had some loss of life,” County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters concerning Asheville. However, he said they were not ready to report specifics as they were hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages. Asheville Police Chief Michael Lamb said that his department had a working list of about 60 people who relatives hadn’t been able to reach and were seeking welfare checks.

Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.

“It’s not that we [were] not prepared, but this is going to another level,” Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement.”

Vinroy Reid, a Jamaican businessman and politician, told The Sunday Gleaner that his checks in Asheville did not reveal any deaths among the Jamaicans.

He said that in Charlotte, also in North Carolina, there was little to no damage and a jerk festival was well under way on Saturday, although it got off to a late start.

Flooded basements, downed trees and loss of power remained the main complaints in those areas.

Impact on the Jamaican community

Over in Georgia, former journalist and community activist Connie Witter told The Sunday Gleaner that there had been no reported major impact on the Jamaican community up to Saturday afternoon.

“We had rains, flooding, high winds and downed trees but everything is back to normal today,” she said.

Michelle Fanger, a Jamaican attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, reported a similar experience.

“Like elsewhere, we got high winds, downed trees, flooding and loss of power, but I have not heard of any major damage to Jamaican property and there has been no reports of a loss of life,” she said.

“Some people were just completely stuck, wherever they are, because of a lack of cellphone service not having electricity.”

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helene’s devastation has been “overwhelming” and pledged to send help.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects US$15 billion to US$26 billion in property damage. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the US is between US$95 billion and US$110 billion.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

– Part reporting by The Associated Press.

editorial@gleanerjm.com