Just five days after rapidly intensifying into the earliest Category 4 Hurricane on Record in the Atlantic Basin, and then becoming the earliest Category 5 Hurricane on record one day later, Hurricane Beryl has left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean.
As the now Category 2 Hurricane barrels towards the Yucatán Peninsula, Caribbean countries from Grenada to the Cayman Islands are assessing the powerful storm’s damage which flattened houses, disrupted communication networks, left thousands without power and resulted in several deaths.
The south-eastern Caribbean island of Carriacou in Grenada was the first to directly face Beryl’s wrath as it made landfall as a Category 4 on July 1, just hours after strengthening to the earliest Category 4 Hurricane in the Atlantic Basin on June 30.
The island, which is just over 35 square kilometers, was battered with dangerous storm surges and winds that exceeded 140 miles per hour which turned roofs into projectiles.
In a press conference after the storm’s passage, Grenadian Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, described the situation on the island as “grim.”
For many, the stark landscape after Beryl’s landfall evoked feelings and images of the similar destruction caused by Hurricane Ivan which made landfall on Grenada as a Category 3 in 2005.
While Beryl did not make direct landfall on Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the storm’s expansive outer bands caused floods, life-threatening storm surges across the countries’ coasts, downed trees and destroyed fishing boats.
Photos and videos shared across social media showed fishermen across all three countries losing their boats to large waves.
Martinique and Guadeloupe also faced similar fates as floods swept across the islands and homes were damaged as a result of powerful winds.
After taking aim at the Windward Islands, Beryl moved swiftly and unrestricted in the Caribbean Sea before passing south of Jamaica on July 3 as a Category 4.
The storm was able to maintain its strength – and reach peak intensity as a Category 5 Hurricane on July 1 – due to warmer-than-usual sea-surface temperatures in the Caribbean Sea.
As an understanding of the storm’s damage became clearer on the morning of July 4, reports indicated that communities in western Jamaica – including Clarendon, St. Elizabeth and Mandeville – faced widespread infrastructure destruction coupled with power outages and water shortages.
There were also initial reports of some communities across the country being communication “dead zones” as communication infrastructure was badly damaged by strong winds and floods.
As Beryl quickly churned out of the Caribbean Sea towards Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on July 4, it took aim at the Cayman Islands as a Category 3 storm before weakening to a Category 2 system later that day.
Rain and wind from the storm’s outer-bands pounded the islands as ABC News reported that a storm surge encroached a beach in Grand Cayman and flooded a pier.
On X (Formerly Twitter), one person in the Cayman Islands reported, “The all clear has been given for the Cayman Islands.
“Plenty of debris and sand in the road from the beach (but) thankfully not a lot of structural damage seen so far.”
Communications service provider, Flow Cayman Islands, shared on X (Formerly Twitter) that the company’s teams were in the field assessing sites and equipment to ensure that communication networks remained available across the country.
