(CMR) There have been widespread reports of destruction in Carriacou, Grenada, as Hurricane Beryl roared across the Windward Islands on Monday as an extremely dangerous Category 4.
Beryl, the strongest known hurricane to pass through the Grenadines, has been delivering catastrophic winds, intense rainfall, and life-threatening storm surges.
Beryl made landfall shortly after 11:00 a.m. EDT on Grenada’s Carriacou Island in the Caribbean Sea with maximum winds of 150 mph, according to NOAA data from 1851.
There were “widespread reports of destruction and devastation in Carriacou and Petite Martinique. In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a Monday news briefing.
Mitchell said there were no immediate reports of death or injury but warned that could change.
“You have to appreciate the ferocity and the strength of the hurricane, and therefore, we are not yet out of the woods. And we are not able to say for sure that no one has been injured or there has been no loss of life as a result of the hurricane,” he said.
Neila K. Ettienne, press secretary for the office of the prime minister, told CNN on Monday that about 95% of the island of Grenada has lost power due to Hurricane Beryl. Telecommunications across Grenada are down, and some individuals have lost internet service.
Devastation was also reported in St Lucia and Barbados. According to AP, “streets from St. Lucia to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines, and scores of other debris scattered by winds up to 150 mph (240 kph), just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm snapped banana trees in half and killed cows that lay in green pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.”
Beryl was still swiping the southeast Caribbean late Monday afternoon, even as it began moving into the Caribbean Sea on a track that would take it just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.