Dr C James Hospedales

I once lived through a Hur­ri­cane – Mar­i­lyn in St Kitts, 1995. I spent a sleep­less night at the Fort George Ho­tel in Bas­seterre, as the winds howled and build­ings shook from time to time. Mar­i­lyn was a Cat­e­go­ry 1 (CAT-1) storm with winds of 74-95 mph, like a pace ball in crick­et. I can’t imag­ine a CAT-5.

At the time, I was an epi­demi­ol­o­gist at CAREC serv­ing on the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Caribbean Dis­as­ter Re­sponse Team. Our first mo­bil­i­sa­tion was to Ja­maica af­ter Hur­ri­cane Gilbert in 1987, a CAT-3 hur­ri­cane (111-129 mph winds). Then, Montser­rat, af­ter Hur­ri­cane Hugo in 1989, a CAT-4 hur­ri­cane (130-156 mph winds) which de­stroyed most homes, stripped leaves off all the trees and left the is­land eeri­ly silent as no birds could be heard.

The wrath of Melis­sa

Fast for­ward to last week. Af­ter lin­ger­ing for days in the Caribbean Sea, caus­ing ma­jor floods in Haiti and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa made land­fall in west­ern Ja­maica on Oc­to­ber 28 as a CAT-5 su­per­storm, with sus­tained winds of 185 mph, the strongest to strike Ja­maica since records be­gan in the late 1800s! Melis­sa then hit Cu­ba and the south­ern Ba­hamas.

At the time of writ­ing, 19 deaths had been con­firmed in Ja­maica and 30 in Haiti. How­ev­er, many com­mu­ni­ties re­main cut off and this toll may rise. Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness de­clared the whole of Ja­maica a dis­as­ter area.

The west of Ja­maica, where Melis­sa tra­versed, was dev­as­tat­ed. The St Eliz­a­beth parish is par­tic­u­lar­ly bad­ly af­fect­ed. Ma­jor hos­pi­tals dam­aged in­clude Black Riv­er Hos­pi­tal ij St Eliz­a­beth (al­most de­stroyed), Corn­wall Re­gion­al in St James, Noel Holmes Hos­pi­tal in Hanover, and Fal­mouth Hos­pi­tal in Trelawny. Man­dev­ille Town suf­fered mas­sive prop­er­ty dam­age. Mon­tego Bay, a ma­jor tourism des­ti­na­tion, suf­fered much prop­er­ty dam­age.

Melis­sa dumped up to 36 inch­es of rain in parts of Ja­maica, caus­ing mas­sive flood­ing, land­slides and block­ages to over 150 roads and bridges. Across the is­land, trees and elec­tric­i­ty poles were downed, wa­ter sys­tems were in­ter­rupt­ed and Wi-Fi and mo­bile phone sys­tems re­main im­pact­ed.

In videos of the storm, peo­ple can be heard scream­ing, “Oh My God!”, as roofs blew off or ve­hi­cles were swept away by rag­ing wa­ters. Some scenes were unimag­in­able, like a bomb de­stroyed the struc­tures. In oth­ers, farm­ers wept as they saw their homes and crops de­stroyed, but re­mained thank­ful they were still alive.

Some 60 miles from where Melis­sa came ashore, Kingston’s main air­port was flood­ed by a 10-foot storm surge, demon­strat­ing the size and pow­er of the hur­ri­cane and ham­per­ing sub­se­quent re­lief ef­forts or vis­i­tors leav­ing.

Health im­pacts

Be­sides the deaths and in­juries and now the in­creased risk of hunger and dis­ease, peo­ple went through a psy­cho­log­i­cal marathon wait­ing for Melis­sa’s ar­rival. Now be­gins an­oth­er marathon, as re­build­ing will take years, and many had not re­cov­ered ful­ly from Hur­ri­cane Beryl of 2024.

Peo­ple with dis­eases like di­a­betes, heart dis­ease, can­cer and with dis­abil­i­ties face ad­di­tion­al chal­lenges ac­cess­ing ser­vices and med­i­cines. This sort of sit­u­a­tion, af­ter Hur­ri­cane Maria in 2017 in Puer­to Ri­co, led to con­sid­er­able ex­cess mor­tal­i­ty in the months af­ter the storm, com­pared to the of­fi­cial death toll.

We need more re­search in the re­gion to bet­ter un­der­stand the im­pacts of cli­mate events be­yond the of­fi­cial death toll and to guide im­proved dis­as­ter man­age­ment plans.

Why was Melis­sa so dev­as­tat­ing?

Su­per­storms like Melis­sa are be­com­ing com­mon­er as cli­mate change ad­vances. The burn­ing of fos­sil fu­els like gas and oil re­leas­es heat trap­ping gas­es like car­bon diox­ide. Nine­ty per cent of the ex­cess heat is stored in the oceans. Hot­ter oceans are the main rea­son why more de­struc­tive hur­ri­canes are in­creas­ing.

It is true that we have had hur­ri­canes for cen­turies in the Caribbean. But this is not the whole truth, to which I bear wit­ness, hav­ing served on the Caribbean dis­as­ter re­sponse team in the 80s and 90s.

Four key ways hur­ri­canes be­have dif­fer­ent­ly nowa­days

In­ten­si­fy faster: from trop­i­cal storm strength to CAT-4/5 overnight so peo­ple have less time to pre­pare. Warmer oceans pow­er more pace!

Stronger winds: we have more CAT-4/5 storms as warmer oceans pro­vide more fu­el for big­ger storms

Wet­ter: Dump­ing more rain as the warmer at­mos­phere holds more wa­ter vapour

Linger longer in one place, so you get pound­ed for longer, as hap­pened with Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an in The Ba­hamas in 2019.

Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa checks all four points above.

What can we do?

Bet­ter prepa­ra­tion for in­creas­ing su­per­storms is need­ed at com­mu­ni­ty, na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­els. Ja­maica has a com­pre­hen­sive hur­ri­cane pre­pared­ness strat­e­gy, in­clud­ing a US$150 mil­lion cat­a­stro­phe bond to pro­vide sup­port for re­build­ing af­ter dis­as­ters. This serves as a mod­el for cli­mate-vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges.

But the dev­as­ta­tion from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa ex­pos­es lim­i­ta­tions to adap­ta­tion. For true change, the world needs to tran­si­tion off fos­sil fu­els as soon as pos­si­ble, and to stop new ex­plo­ration for gas and oil.

Dr C James Hospedales, MB BS, MSc, FF­PH jameshospedales@earth­medic.org

The fore­go­ing was a week­ly col­umn by the Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to help read­ers un­der­stand and ad­dress the cli­mate cri­sis.