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Jamaican mayor on destruction_ 'Catastrophic is a mild term' · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Jamaica battered by Hurricane Melissa, as seen in this stunning
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: drone video posted by the country's Prime minister. After one
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: of the strongest Atlantic storms on record, at least four
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: bodies have been recovered in Saint Elizabeth Parish. According to officials,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the storm is now a Category one storm, but the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: danger is not over right now. Powerful wind bands are
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: spreading as Melissa bears down on the Bahamas. In Haiti,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: at least twenty five people are dead after the storm
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: burst riverbanks. Some are still trapped in collapsed houses southwest
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of Port de Prince, according to a local official who
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  Speaker 1: says he's quote overwhelmed, overwhelmed, as the nation also grapples
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: with rampant gang violence. In Cuba, nearly one hundred and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand people are isolated, cut off by rising rivers.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: The Cuban presidents as the country suffered significant damage. Meanwhile,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Jamaicans are currently assessing the destruction. Today's heat index in
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: some areas topp to one hundred degrees. Seventy seven percent
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of the island is completely without power, complicating recovery efforts.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Take a listen to the mayor of the Southern Coastal
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  Speaker 1: town of Black River.
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  Speaker 2: The conditions here are give us a term, he is somewhat,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: we are observing, we are unable to learn riscueing, we're unable.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: To risk pund CNN meteorologist Derek van dam rode out
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the storm in Jamaica and tagged along with recovery crews
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: today to see impassable roads and very slow progress.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: After Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record,
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: whipped through Jamaica Tuesday, leaving behind a path of destruction
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: most of the island without power. On the ground a
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: muddy mess as people come out to survey the damage
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: for the first time. Crumbling infrastructure, flooded roads, down trees,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: causing major disruption and make getting aid to those most
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: in need a very difficult task. We are literally on
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  Speaker 3: the front lines of the Jamaica Defense Force, ambulances, local NGOs,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: police volunteers trying to clear the roadway leading into Black
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: River some of the what we believe is the hardest
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: hit areas from Hurricane Melissa. It's a monumental effort to
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: try and get aid through to this area, including medical provisions.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: We've seen ambulances and people coming together to push those
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: ambulances through debris and thick mud. This effort trying to
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: get aid and people and the help that is desperately
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: needed into portions of western Jamaica. People banded together. Some
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: did whatever they could against the force of nature, like Gregory,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: who climbed on top of his roof to nail it
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: down during the Category five hurricane.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: I need to verify me at my room in this
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: time in marine corps with muhammadment and and and nil
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Anilo my room.
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  Speaker 3: And Damien who watched his house fly away and dodged
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: the breathe.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Hey, I watch it flat away. Yeah, and it was
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: scared of the went outside my veh clem the tree
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: on the follow my ve Clim's gonna have to like
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: run outside move them, and you know, I'm just move on.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Melissa also hit Cuba, flooding streets of Santiago and cutting
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: off road access much. There was a lot of wind,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of rain. This area was flooded where you
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: see now. The water reached almost knee high in Haiti.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Melissa's outer bands brought deadly flooding back in Jamaica. The
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: road to recovery is long, but some are staying strong.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't get a disast, all right. And also we're
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: just up to pray or put the best and the
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: good help eachin when you can't help. And that's it.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: Jake.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: We are still on the front lines of this medical
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: aid convoy that is moving and aiming itself towards the
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Black River, some of the hardest hit areas of western Jamaica.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: We've had pleas from the Jamaican Defense Force pleading for
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: more hands. More people means more debris can be removed
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: from this area.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Here's one of.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: The many ambulances that have set up in this convoy.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: But as you can see, we're stuck in a position
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: because of the debris that is littered across the road,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: making getting the necessary aid, the medical help, the food,
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  Speaker 3: the provisions anything communications as well, next to impossible to
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Black River, which is still a good ten miles down
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: the road. It is going to be a daunting task.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: It already has been. But what we've noticed is this
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: humanitarian effort, everybody coming together in Jamaica in these communities, Jake,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: giving and lending their hands, even pushing ambulances through mud,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: debris and mud slides that we've seen here across the roads.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: Of Western Jamaica.
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  Speaker 3: It is a catastrophic situation.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: All right, Sena Meteorologists, Dark ven Dam and Jamaica, thank
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: you so much. Joining us now the Jamaican Minister of Information,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Dana Morris Dixon, Minister, what is the most urgent need
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: for Jamaican's right now?
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Jake. There's a lot of need. We have
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: to get access to those communities that are cut off,
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  Speaker 5: and there are many communities in western Jamaica, Saint Elizabeth,
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: in Montegoby. I know a lot of American tourists come
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: and see beautiful Montegoby that has taken a big hit,
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: and so we need to get to those marooned communities
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: and so having heavy equipment, having crew that can come
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  Speaker 5: in and assist us in getting to those areas is
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  Speaker 5: really very important. We also need to get food to
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: these areas because a lot of these people are cut
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: off and do need food supplies flown into them, and
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: so there's a lot of need. On the western side
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: of the island.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Four bodies were recovered in Saint Elizabeth. You heard the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: mayor of Black Rivers say the rescue teams cannot start
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: working because they can't even get the equipment up and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: running due to the flooding. How much worse yeh or
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: is the death toll anticipated to get.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: Well?
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  Speaker 5: We are still praying that it will not get too high,
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: but we don't know because we've not been able to
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: get to some of the hardest hit areas, and so
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: we have reports from other parts of Jamaica of potential deaths,
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: but we are not able to verify it with the
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: police because we've not been able to get many of
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: our emergency teams into those communities. This was a Category
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: five hurricane. We kept saying before it came that it
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: was going to be catastrophic, and we're now seeing those
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: pictures and we're completely devastated in Jamaica. But we're doing
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: everything that we can in order to get assistance to
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: those communities that need it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Your message to the more than twenty five thousand tourists
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: who are still are in Jamaica is quote, there's no
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: need to worry. When do you think it will be
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: safe enough for them to fly out? For them to leave?
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: Well, the good thing is that Kingston did not get
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: hit in the way Montego Bay or Saint Elizabeth was,
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: so the eastern part of the island was spared the
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: worst of it. We still had lots of heavy wind
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: and we also had a lot of rain. But we
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: are able to now open Norman Manly International Airport, which
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: is our major airport in Kingston, and so that opens
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: this afternoon, and so we're very happy about that because
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: that means that we can now land humanitarian planes that
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: are coming in with relief product for all of those
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: in the damaged areas. We're also working really hard to
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: get our airport in Montico Bay back up and running,
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: and so we believe that very soon those tourists who
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: do want to leave, the twenty five thousand of them
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: that we're on island in the hurricane, that they will
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: soon be able to leave if they need to.
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: All right, our.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Prayers are with you, Minister Dana Moorri Stixon.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Thank you very much.
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: We appreciate all your support, all of the support from
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: everyone internationally.