Hurricane Beryl wreaks havoc on southeastern Caribbean island: “Keep praying”

Hurricane Beryl tore off doors, windows and roofs from homes in the southeastern Caribbean on Monday after made landfall on the island of Carriacou as the earliest Category 4 storms strength to form in the Atlantic, supported by record warm water.

NBC Radio in St. Vincent and the Grenadines reported one death on the island of Bequia, as well as extensive damage to schools, homes, buildings and farmland nationwide. Communications remain largely down in the region.

The roads from the island of St. Lucia as far south as Grenada was littered with downed trees, downed power lines and other scattered debris. winds up to 150 mph – just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm uprooted a banana tree in half and killed a cow lying on a green pasture as if it were sleeping. Houses made of tin and plywood are leaning nearby.

“Right now, I’m really heartbroken,” Vichelle Clark King said as she surveyed a damaged store in the Barbadian capital of Bridgetown that was filled with sand and water.

Beryl was still sweeping the southeastern Caribbean late Monday and has moving on the track which will take southern Jamaica and then into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.

“Beryl is expected to remain a dangerous major hurricane as it moves over the eastern Caribbean,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The last powerful storm to hit the southeastern Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

NBC Radio said it received reports of roofs that collapsed off churches and schools while communications began to collapse across the southeastern Caribbean.

Near Grenada, officials received “reports of devastation” from Carriacou and surrounding islands, said Terence Walters, Grenada’s national disaster coordinator. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said he would travel to Carriacou as soon as it was safe, as the storm surge was already “extensive”.

Grenada officials had to evacuate patients to the ground floor after the hospital’s roof collapsed, he said.

“There is a possibility of greater damage,” he told reporters. “We have no choice but to continue to pray.”

In Barbados, Wilfred Abrahams, the minister of home affairs and information, said drones – which are faster than crews crossing the island – would assess the damage after Beryl passed.

Forecasters have warned of life-threatening storm surges of up to 9 feet (3 meters) in the area where Beryl made landfall, with 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15 centimeters) of rain on Barbados and nearby islands and possible also 10 inches in some. area (25 centimeters), especially in Grenada and the Grenadines.

Beryl was strengthened from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just 42 hours – a feat accomplished only six times in the history of Atlantic hurricanes, and with September 1 as the earliest previous date, according to hurricane expert Sam Lillo.

It was also the earliest Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record, beating Hurricane Dennis, which became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.

Beryl gathered its strength from record warm waters that are now warmer than at the peak of the hurricane season in September, hurricane specialist and storm expert Michael Lowry said.

Jaswinderpal Parmar of Fresno, California, who was among thousands traveling to Barbados for Saturday’s Twenty20 World Cup cricket final, said he and his family were now stuck there with many other fans, their flight canceled on Sunday.

He said over the phone that this was the first time he had experienced a typhoon – he and his family had been praying, as well as taking calls from concerned friends and family all the way to India.

“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Parmar, 47, said.

Although Beryl bore down on the southeastern Caribbean, government officials warned of a separate group of thunderstorms mimicking the path of a hurricane that has a 70% chance of becoming a tropical depression.

“There’s a concern that you have a storm back,” Lowry said. “If two storms move over the same area or nearby, the first storm will damage infrastructure, so the secondary system doesn’t need to be strong enough to have a serious impact.”

Beryl is number two the name of the storm in the Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to November 30. Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall in northern Mexico and killed four people.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts 2024 typhoon season may be above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast calls for 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

The average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.