MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Jamaica is bracing for a Category 5 hurricane that is expected to make landfall this morning.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Hurricane Melissa is the strongest hurricane ever to hit the island, and its winds are starting to build there.
MARTIN: NPR's Eyder Peralta is following this story from Mexico City. Good morning to you, Eyder.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So where are we expecting this hurricane to come on shore?
PERALTA: Last night, Hurricane Melissa essentially paused for a few hours. It wasn't moving very much. But now it has made a northeasterly turn, and in the next few hours, it will pummel Jamaica's southeastern coast. This is a monster storm, and that's not an overstatement. The National Hurricane Center says it has wind gusts of 175 miles per hour, making it one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin, and it will become the strongest storm in recorded history to make landfall in Jamaica. For Jamaica, this only compares to Hurricane Gilbert, which made landfall as a Category 4 in 1988.
MARTIN: In Jamaica, do we know anything about the damage so far, even with the storm still off the coast?
PERALTA: Yeah. The strongest winds are not yet on shore, and it has been a long wait because this hurricane has been meandering just off the coast since last week. Last night, as the winds were picking up, our producer in Kingston spoke to Accimo Smith (ph) who was watching waves from a pier. And he said what worried him immediately is that they had waited so long for this storm that they had already begun digging into their emergency supplies.
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ACCIMO SMITH: Our emergency supplies are almost finished. Some actually finished already. So hope for the best, really.
PERALTA: This is a serious storm, as serious as it gets. The whole island, which has a population of around 3 million, will be pummeled, and forecasters say we should expect catastrophic damage. Winds of that speed will cause total structural failure, and they're going to cause severe damage to the infrastructure. Not only that, but the coastal areas will get a huge storm surge of up to 13 feet. And we should note that three people have already died during the preparation stage of the storm. All three were killed by accidents involving the trimming of trees.
MARTIN: What has the government said about recovery?
PERALTA: I mean, the government says that it is ready. They say that crews will be immediately clearing roads and trying to get the power back on, and they say they're ready to begin distributing aid as soon as this storm passes. But last night, government officials said they were worried because few Jamaicans had actually sought shelter. The winds were already picking up, and officials said that out of the 881 shelters, only 133 of them had people in them, so a lot of them were completely empty. Government officials were out last night trying to convince people to evacuate before the winds got too strong. Local government minister Desmond McKenzie warned that many parishes were about to get hit very hard.
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DESMOND MCKENZIE: And I want to urge persons in these parishes to get to high ground as quickly as possible.
PERALTA: So he's saying get to higher ground away from the coast. And as this storm approaches, it makes you wonder how many of these people in lower elevations - it makes you wonder how they will fare.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Eyder Peralta. He's reporting from Mexico City. Eyder, thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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