Two peo­ple are con­firmed dead fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl on Wednes­day.

The storm left a trail of de­struc­tion along the is­land’s south coast,down­ing pow­er lines and leav­ing hun­dreds home­less and in shel­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports a man and a woman had died as a re­sult of the storm in the last 24 hours.

The man, aged 26, was swept away by flood­wa­ters in the Cor­po­rate Area on Wednes­day evening.

“He was play­ing foot­ball with friends at the mi­ni sta­di­um when the ball went out­side, and he at­tempt­ed to re­trieve it,” po­lice said.

A search is al­so un­der­way for an­oth­er man who was swept away by flood­wa­ters.

The brings the to­tal dead this week as a re­sult of Beryl in the Caribbean to nine.

Mean­while, the Act­ing Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Emer­gency Man­age­ment (ODPEM) Richard Thomp­son, said that a sec­tion of the Belle­vue Hos­pi­tal, the coun­try’s lead­ing men­tal health fa­cil­i­ty was dam­aged in the wake of the storm

“The roof on one of the wards went and we had to re­lo­cate some of the pa­tients.

And re­ports of flood­ing have come in from sev­er­al sec­tions of the is­land main­ly in the east­ern parish­es of Port­land and St Mary, the south­ern parish­es of St. Cather­ine and Claren­don and the west­ern parish of Hanover. This was in ad­di­tion to re­ports of a storm surge along the north­ern and south­ern coasts.

Con­cern­ing the is­land’s air­ports, the Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Ja­maica, Au­d­ley Dei­drick, says an as­sess­ment will be done of con­di­tions .

He the as­sess­ment is to “at­tend to any is­sue that may in­hib­it open­ing and state how these will be dealt with in short or­der for the re-open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ties.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dei­drick the roof of the pas­sen­ger pier, oth­er­wise called the fin­ger, at Nor­man Man­ley In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (NMIA) sus­tained dam­age dur­ing the hur­ri­cane.

Dei­drick al­so in­di­cat­ed that he had re­ceived no neg­a­tive re­port from the Sang­ster In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and said op­er­a­tors will as­sess the fa­cil­i­ty and take a de­ci­sion on when to re-open.

Con­cern­ing the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, the light and pow­er com­pa­ny, Ja­maica Pub­lic Ser­vice, (JPS), has put a pause on the restora­tion of elec­tric­i­ty ser­vices in the in­ter­est of the safe­ty of its teams.

Mean­while, a flash flood watch is in ef­fect for south­ern and north­west­ern parish­es

The hur­ri­cane warn­ing was dis­con­tin­ued late Wednes­day as hur­ri­cane Beryl con­tin­ued to move west of the coun­try.

A flash flood watch means that flash flood­ing is pos­si­ble, and res­i­dents are ad­vised to take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures, and be ready for quick ac­tion if flood­ing is ob­served or if a warn­ing is is­sued.

The storm has now di­min­ished to a Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm with sus­tained winds of 120 mph — but wide­spread dam­age is still ex­pect­ed in the Cay­man Is­lands, where a hur­ri­cane warn­ing is place on Thurs­day as the storm’s eye moves to­wards the south of the is­lands.