SOUTH ROYALTON — As communication with Jamaica remains tenuous in the wake of this week’s catastrophic hurricane, those in the Upper Valley with ties to the island are worried about the safety of their families and the status of their homes.
“We’re just hoping for the best right now,” said Akeliyah Robinson-Lawrence, who hails from Port Antonio, Jamaica. She and her husband Patrick Lawrence moved from Jamaica to the Upper Valley in 2023 to join family already living here. Together the couple runs K&P Catering Service, which recently expanded to include a restaurant in South Royalton.
Due to the power outages, as of Thursday, Lawrence, 35, hasn’t been able to speak with his children, who live with their mother on the island, since a couple days before the storm hit.
“It’s not the best,” he said. “The storm was headed right to Jamaica and I wasn’t there to protect the kids.”
Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record in the Atlantic, tore through the Caribbean this week, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Melissa hit Jamaica especially hard on Tuesday. With 185 mph winds and up to 30 inches of rainfall, it overtook Hurricane Gilbert, from 1988, as the most powerful storm to strike the island.
The hurricane, which collapsed houses and toppled trees and power lines before making its way to Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas and Bermuda, has left many Jamaicans without a home or a way to contact their families.
As of Friday, the total death toll from the hurricane had reached 49 people.
The sense of uncertainty following the storm has weighed heavy on Lawrence, who took part of the week off from his second job at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vt.
His children, ages 8 and 10, and their mother live on the eastern part of the island where the damage wasn’t as severe, but Lawrence doesn’t know when power will return or when he’ll be able to contact them.
Robinson-Lawrence also is waiting to hear from siblings in Montego Bay, a major city on the island’s north coast.
“I’m not sure if they’re good because I’m not getting through to them,” she said.
She hopes that she’ll hear from them soon, and that she and Lawrence will be able to send money to help them rebuild and access resources such as food and water.
While the couple waits to hear from their families, Gwendolyn Bernard, whose son runs the Karibbean, a Haitian and Jamaican restaurant with locations in Lebanon and West Lebanon, is grappling with the news that a portion of her home was destroyed in the storm.
Despite the many hurricanes that have hit Jamaica over the years, this is the first time Bernard’s home in a community known as Hanover Parish has been severely damaged.
She had just stayed at her house a couple weeks ago while visiting family, so the news has come as a shock.
“I was just trying to cheer myself up (this morning) with gospel songs,” Bernard, 67, said in an interview at the West Lebanon restaurant.
She’s heard from some family members, including two nieces who lost their roofs in the storm, but she still hasn’t been able to make contact with her son, who lives on the island.
“I just want to be able to talk to my son,” she said.
In addition to destroying numerous homes and businesses, Melissa also forced Jamaica’s major airports to close while the storm bore down. Even as airports begin to open again, travel plans to the island remain tenuous.
As of Thursday, Tamar Miller, a guest worker at Crossroad Farm in Fairlee, was still unsure when he would be able to return home to Montego Bay.
His house, which he built out of concrete around 2013, survived the storm, he said, but a wooden garage was severely damaged.
One of his cousins, meanwhile, lost their roof, while another’s windows were broken, though their concrete home remained intact.
Many Jamaicans opt to build homes from concrete, which fare better in hurricanes like Melissa than wooden homes with zinc roofs, Miller said. But building materials are expensive and not everyone can afford it.
Seasonal work at farms like Crossroad, which Miller has done for over a decade, has helped him afford his concrete home.
“I really love the opportunity to come here and work,” he said in an interview on Thursday at Crossroad, where he’d spent the morning processing salad greens. “Apart from Jamaica, I call Vermont home.”
Miller is one of the 500 Jamaican H-2A guest workers in Vermont who bolster the state’s agricultural workforce.
He noted that many people in Jamaica hadn’t expected the storm to be so severe.
“We have to prepare for this kind of storm, but people didn’t really prepare,” he said.
Families have lost their homes, he said, but they’ve also lost the businesses that sustained their livelihoods, and many people are still recovering from Hurricane Beryl, a Category 4 hurricane that struck the island last year.
“It’s going to take months, even years, for some people to recover,” he said.
He hopes to fly home sometime next week, now that airports have begun to open, with aid groups arriving to provide food and water, and help residents recover from the wreckage of the storm.
Even though he and his family have lost parts of their home, what’s most important is that they’re safe, he said.
“Once there’s life, there’s hope,” he said.