Hur­ri­cane Beryl has left a trail of death and de­struc­tion in its wake af­ter ram­pag­ing across the Caribbean. Three peo­ple were re­port­ed killed in Grena­da and Car­ri­a­cou, and an­oth­er in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, of­fi­cials said.

Dev­as­ta­tion de­scend­ed up­on Grena­da’s Car­ri­a­cou Is­land and Pe­tite Mar­tinique as the is­lands served as ground ze­ro for the hur­ri­cane with a Cat­e­go­ry 4 strength and 150 miles per hour eye, which de­stroyed homes and left three peo­ple dead. Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell said the fa­tal­i­ties were record­ed in Grena­da and Car­ri­a­cou, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the fig­ure ris­ing in the com­ing days. 

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said, “Min­is­ter An­drews has ten­ta­tive­ly re­port­ed at least two deaths as a re­sult of the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that there may be more re­mains a grim re­al­i­ty.”

Mitchell stat­ed that the ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works made it dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain facts. “I can’t elab­o­rate on this; all I can say to you is that we have one fa­tal­i­ty in Grena­da that hap­pened when a tree fell on a house. In the case of Car­ri­a­cou, the re­ports I have are of two fa­tal­i­ties. I can­not give you more de­tails, as I in­di­cat­ed we have had vir­tu­al­ly no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Car­ri­a­cou in the last 12 hours ex­cept briefly this morn­ing (Tues­day) via satel­lite phone. Move­ment with­in Car­ri­a­cou is se­vere­ly re­strict­ed be­cause of the sig­nif­i­cant de­struc­tion.” Mitchell paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of the is­land in the af­ter­math of the hur­ri­cane. “The sit­u­a­tion is grim; there is no pow­er, and there is al­most com­plete de­struc­tion of homes and build­ings on the is­lands. The roads are not pass­able, and in many in­stances, they are cut off be­cause of the large quan­ti­ty of de­bris strewn all over the streets, and ob­vi­ous­ly, there are dan­gers posed by downed pow­er lines.”

He fur­ther not­ed that as a re­sult of the wide­spread de­struc­tion of homes and prop­er­ties, emer­gency shel­ters would con­tin­ue to re­main in op­er­a­tion.

“The north of the is­land, in­clud­ing Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique, and the south of the is­land are al­most com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent places. In the south­ern tip, there is min­i­mal dam­age, and all pow­er has al­ready been re­stored. But that is not the case in the north, west­ern, and east­ern parts of the is­land. We are still deal­ing with road clear­ance; pow­er is out, and nu­mer­ous of our cit­i­zens have lost their roofs and do not have any shel­ter over their heads. Our shel­ters will re­main open.”

The hur­ri­cane hor­ror sto­ry was al­so shared by an emo­tion­al prime min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, who re­count­ed the tragedy that swept through the is­lands of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

“Sad­ly, it has been re­port­ed to the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Or­ga­ni­za­tion (NEMO). We don’t yet know all the de­tails of how one per­son died. There may well be more fa­tal­i­ties. We are not yet sure, giv­en the fact that I am re­port­ing to you a few hours af­ter the dev­as­ta­tion that was brought un­to this land.”

Gon­salves stat­ed that 90 per cent of homes and busi­ness­es on Union Is­land were de­stroyed, and its air­port was al­so dam­aged.

“From the in­di­ca­tors, we have suf­fered bad­ly, and in par­tic­u­lar ar­eas like Union Is­land, for ex­am­ple, it has been dev­as­tat­ing.”

He ap­pealed to crim­i­nal el­e­ments on the is­land not to ex­ploit the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of those im­pact­ed by the hur­ri­cane. On Mon­day evening, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley said clean-up ef­forts were un­der­way for im­pact­ed coastal ar­eas. She stat­ed that while dam­age to prop­er­ties and in­fra­struc­ture was record­ed, the coun­try was spared the brunt of the hur­ri­cane.

“I still be­lieve that while we have had sig­nif­i­cant dam­age, the truth is it could have been a lot worse, and we have to give thanks and say our prayers,” she said.

In St Lu­cia, as­sess­ments of the dam­age were be­ing con­duct­ed. Prime Min­is­ter Philip J Pierre is­sued an all-clear for util­i­ty com­pa­nies to be­gin eval­u­at­ing and per­form­ing re­pairs. He in­di­cat­ed that busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment of­fices were ex­pect­ed to re­open yes­ter­day, and schools were ex­pect­ed to re­open to­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the St Lu­cia Times, “The Prime Min­is­ter al­so dis­closed ‘sig­nif­i­cant dam­age’ at the Soufriere Wa­ter­front and Ceme­tery area, flood­ing in La­borie, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the Cross Over Park and wa­ter­front ar­eas. In ad­di­tion, Pierre said the Vieux Fort Po­lice Jet­ty has been com­plete­ly de­stroyed.”