Heavy flood­wa­ters swept across south­west­ern Ja­maica, winds tore roofs off build­ings and boul­ders tum­bled in­to roads Tues­day as Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa came ashore as a cat­a­stroph­ic Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm, tied for the strongest land­falling At­lantic hur­ri­canes in his­to­ry.

The storm land­ed in south­west­ern Ja­maica near New Hope and is ex­pect­ed to ex­it around St. Ann parish in the north, fore­cast­ers said. The storm is ex­pect­ed to slice di­ag­o­nal­ly across the is­land, then head for Cu­ba. It has been blamed for at least sev­en deaths so far in the Caribbean — three in Ja­maica, three in Haiti and one in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Land­slides, fall­en trees and nu­mer­ous pow­er out­ages were re­port­ed ahead of Melis­sa’s land­fall, with of­fi­cials in Ja­maica cau­tion­ing that the cleanup and dam­age as­sess­ment would be slow.

“There is no in­fra­struc­ture in the re­gion that can with­stand a Cat­e­go­ry 5,” Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said Mon­day. “The ques­tion now is the speed of re­cov­ery. That’s the chal­lenge.”

BRID­GET BROWN, NAO­MI KOP­PEL and LU­E­NA RO­DRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA