The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Emer­gency Man­age­ment (ODPEM) says it is con­duct­ing rapid dam­age and needs as­sess­ments in af­fect­ed parish­es to in­form the au­thor­i­ties on the as­sis­tance to be pro­vid­ed in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

The hur­ri­cane, which passed Ja­maica’s south coast on Wednes­day as a Cat­e­go­ry four storm,  caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to prop­er­ty and the road net­work.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices have al­so been dis­rupt­ed in sev­er­al parish­es.

How­ev­er, lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers Flow and Dig­i­cel have said less than 40 per cent of their ser­vices were im­pact­ed by the storm.

Con­cern­ing the worst af­fect­ed parish­es, the act­ing Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of ODPEM, Richard Thomp­son, list­ed them as the south­ern parish­es of  Eliz­a­beth and Man­ches­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for South West St. Eliz­a­beth, Floyd Green, based on re­ports re­ceived, it ap­pears no com­mu­ni­ty in his con­stituen­cy was spared in the parish known as Ja­maica’s bread bas­ket.

The storm dam­aged crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and prop­er­ty in­clud­ing schools.

“To be hon­est, I’ve had re­ports of dam­age large­ly, roofs be­ing blown off,  hous­es be­ing dam­aged, trees downed, poles down from every sin­gle com­mu­ni­ty thus far. In fact, I’ve had mul­ti­ple peo­ple in­di­cat­ing that they’ve com­plete­ly lost their hous­es,” he told Ra­dio Ja­maica.

The hos­pi­tal in the parish cap­i­tal of Black Riv­er al­so suf­fered dam­age to its roof and walls.

Mean­while, the ODPEM’s act­ing di­rec­tor said that the all-clear for the start of the restora­tion of ser­vices will come af­ter the lift­ing of ad­vi­sories by the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice of Ja­maica.

Con­cern­ing the wa­ter sup­ply the Na­tion­al Wa­ter Com­mis­sion (NWC)  says at least 70 per cent of its cus­tomers are with­out reg­u­lar sup­ply due to high tur­bid­i­ty lev­els.

Act­ing Cor­po­rate Pub­lic Re­la­tions Man­ag­er, De­lano Williams, says sev­er­al sys­tems were al­so shut down ahead of the hur­ri­cane’s pas­sage.

Ac­cord­ing to  Williams, ef­forts will be made to re­store wa­ter to crit­i­cal ar­eas in the parish­es of Trelawny, St. James, Hanover and West­more­land and to bring all sys­tems back on­line.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jul. 4, CMC

CMC/jm/kb/2024