You person a preview presumption of this nonfiction portion we are checking your access. When we person confirmed access, the afloat nonfiction contented volition load.
- Updates
- Tracking the Storm
- Photos and Video
- Why Beryl Is a Bad Sign
- Damage successful the Caribbean
- Scientists Fly Into Beryl
Though parts of Jamaica were severely damaged, its premier curate said it could person been acold worse.
![A antheral successful a yellowish enactment vest walks past a fallen tree.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/04/multimedia/04hurricane-beryl-ledeall-01-bgck/04hurricane-beryl-ledeall-01-bgck-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
July 4, 2024, 5:00 p.m. ET
Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever recorded successful the Atlantic, tore done a caller swath of the Caribbean, wherever it had near islands flattened and communities inundated, past continued connected a way toward Mexico connected Thursday.
In Jamaica, residents who emerged from shelters took successful a scenery of farmland that had been devastated, homes that had sustained harm and roads that were covered with toppled inferior poles and foliage.
“The full spot mash up,” Steve Taylor, a nonmigratory of the low-lying coastal municipality of Mitchell Town, told a section tv station.
St. Elizabeth, a farming portion known arsenic the country’s breadstuff basket, was deed peculiarly hard. “Southwest St. Elizabeth is facing implicit devastation,” said Jamaica’s agriculture minister, Floyd Green.
Still, arsenic brutal arsenic Hurricane Beryl was, Jamaican officials surveying the demolition said it could person been inactive worse.
“The harm was not what we had expected, and truthful we’re precise grateful for that,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness told CNN connected Thursday. “I deliberation Jamaica was spared the worst.”