One death and plenty of damage in Jamaica. Hurricane Beryl weakens to Category 2

Cleanup began in Jamaica Thursday as the last vestiges of powerful Hurricane Beryl pulled away overnight, leaving roofless homes, flooded buildings, blocked roads and extensive power outages, as well as at least one confirmed death.

Beryl weakened to a Category 2 by midday after passing the Cayman Islands and was headed for its next landfall on the Yucatan peninsula Friday — likely as a Category 1 hurricane.

Its imminent Caribbean exit is welcome news for the many islands smacked by the history-making hurricane. At least seven of them are reeling in the eastern Caribbean, where Beryl first made landfall on Monday and leveled some small islands with “98% destruction.”

Even the outermost bands of Beryl were enough to cause power outages and road closures in the Dominican Republic, but the harder hit was on Jamaica’s southern coast, which got brushed by the northern eyewall of the at-the-time Category 4 hurricane.

Jamaicans woke up Thursday to downed power lines in Portmore, trees blocking the highway in Manchester and in south St. Elizabeth: knee-high flood waters, wet furniture and ripped-off roofs. Around 400,000 customers were without electricity overnight Wednesday, the Jamaica Public Service Company told the Jamaica Gleaner.

Transport Minister Daryl Vaz confirmed that while the runway at Norman Manley International Airport was not impacted, the jet bridge roof for boarding and arrival was ripped off by the storm.

“A plan will be prepared to show how the airport will operate while that area is being repaired,” Vaz wrote on X.

Due to the damage, the airport will remain closed Thursday to allow for repairs. The proposed reopening is 5 a.m. Friday, Vaz said in a statement. The country’s Sangster International Airport and Ian Fleming International Airport are operational.

Officials confirmed one death so far, a 26-year-old woman who died after a tree limb fell on her, Acting Director-General at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, Richard Thompson, told the Jamaica Observer.

A missing man was also washed away by floodwaters, Jamaican Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon told the Observer.

“His status is unconfirmed. We grieve with the families affected,” she told the outlet.

In Treasure Beach, a small fishing and agricultural community on the coast of southern Jamaica, residents said that there was widespread property damage.

An initial assessment showed that roughly about one-third of homes had damaged or lost roofs, said Justine Henzell, whose family has lived in the area since the 1940s. But she stressed that the community was just beginning to evaluate the hurricane’s aftermath and those numbers were preliminary. Above all, Henzell said she was grateful that there had been no loss of life or reports of injuries so far.

“We’re giving thanks that people are safe,” she said.

Like a tsunami in Haiti

Beryl did not spare anyone in its path, not even Haiti. Though the hurricane didn’t represent a direct threat to the environmentally vulnerable country, the head of the country’s Office of Civil Protection said agriculture and roads took a hit.

In the Grand’Anse region, which is closest to Jamaica, “the plantain fields were devastated,” Emmanuel Pierre said during an interview Wednesday morning on Port-au-Prince Magik9 radio station.

Pierre said in some coastal communities along the southern region, the sea came in hundreds of feet inland, “as if it were a tsunami,” bringing canoes and other debris in one case all the way into the center of a village. “Houses by the sea were hit,” he said.

Among the major damages registered so far, a road connecting the towns of Marigot and Anse-à-Pitres, which borders the Dominican Republic. The road has been cut off, preventing passage.

At least one person is reported missing, Pierre said. A fisherman who was out in Ile a Vache, an island off the coast of Les Cayes, during the storm has disappeared. In Les Cayemites, an island off the coast, the mayor’s office had to dispatch rescuers amid the winds and rains to rescue the occupants of a small boat from Port-au-Prince after they reported being in distress.

Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement late Wednesday that the United Nations Secretary-General is “deeply dismayed by the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Beryl” and promised $4 million in aid from the Central Emergency Response Fund to “kickstart humanitarian operations” in Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

READ MORE: Hurricane Beryl has devastated the Caribbean. Here’s how you can help from Miami

Next stop: Mexico

As of the 8 p.m. update from the National Hurricane Center, Beryl was packing 110 mph sustained winds and headed west-northwest at 20 mph. It was about 180 miles east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico.

Now a Category 2 hurricane, Beryl is expected to continue to weaken as it cruises toward a landfall in Mexico as a Category 1.

The latest forecast track from the National Hurricane Center steers Beryl over the Yucatan and into the Gulf of Mexico, where it’s expected to re-strengthen a bit before making yet another landfall as a Category 1 hurricane near the border of Mexico and Texas.

“Slow weakening is forecast before the center makes landfall,with rapid weakening expected while Beryl crosses the Yucatan Peninsula. Slow re-intensification is expected when Beryl moves over the Gulf of Mexico,” forecasters said in the 8 p.m. discussion.