Hurricane Melissa live updates: At least 49 dead as storm thrashes Bermuda and Caribbean nations assess damage

In Cuba, heavy equipment began to clear blocked roads and highways and the military helped rescue people trapped in isolated communities and at risk from landslides.

No deaths were reported after the Civil Defence evacuated more than 735,000 people across eastern Cuba ahead of the storm. Residents are slowly starting to return home.

The town of El Cobre in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba was one of the hardest hit. Home to some 7,000 people, it is also the site of the Basilica of Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba who is deeply venerated by Catholics and practitioners of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion.

“We went through this very badly. So much wind, so much wind. Zinc roofs were torn off. Some houses completely collapsed. It was a disaster,” said Odalys Ojeda, a 61-year-old retiree, as she looked up at the sky from her living room where the roof and other parts of the house were torn away.

Hurricane Melissa’s confirmed death toll climbed to 49, according to official reports, after wreaking destruction across much of the northern Caribbean and picking up speed as it headed past Bermuda in the North Atlantic.

Authorities in Haiti, which was not directly hit but nevertheless suffered days of torrential rains from the slow-moving storm, reported at least 30 deaths and 20 more missing.

At least 23 people, including 10 children, died in Haiti’s southern town of Petit-Goave when a river burst its banks. Roads, houses and farmlands were also damaged by the rains.

Jamaica’s information minister confirmed at least 19 deaths, but said authorities were continuing search and rescue efforts.

The storm left hundreds of thousands without power, ripped roofs of buildings and scattered fields with rubble.

Emergency relief flights are landing at Jamaica’s main international airport as crews distributed water, medicine and other basic supplies.

Helicopters dropped food as they thrummed above communities where the storm flattened homes, wiped out roads and destroyed bridges, cutting them off from assistance.

Government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach dozens of isolated communities in the island’s southeast that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.

“The entire Jamaica is really broken because of what has happened,” Education Minister Dana Morris Dixon said.

Hurricane Melissa has cut a path of destruction through the Caribbean this week, hitting Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas with winds of up to 185 mph.

Why has this storm been so devastating?

Tropical storm conditions are occurring now in Bermuda, according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center.

The island is also under a Hurricane Warning.

“On the forecast track, the center of Melissa is expected to pass to the northwest of Bermuda tonight and pass south of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland as a post-tropical cyclone on Friday night,” the National Hurricane Center said.

Hurricane Melissa is now a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds as it passes to the northwest of Bermuda.

The storm is expected to weaken later tonight and on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. It’s forecasted to then become a post-tropical low by Friday night.

Hurricane Melissa’s death toll is rising as authorities assess the damage from the storm.

At least 30 people were killed in Haiti, and at least 19 deaths have been reported in Jamaica, the Associated Press reports.

New drone footage has revealed the scale of Hurricane Melissa’s destruction in a Jamaican fishing village.