UN official says Hurricane Melissa caused "unprecedented" damage in Jamaica; aid being staged from Barbados

United Nations Resident Coordinator Dennis Zulu said Thursday that Hurricane Melissa made landfall "around lunchtime" near Black River in Saint Elizabeth parish, Jamaica, producing "tremendous unprecedented devastation" to infrastructure, power and communications and displacing large numbers of people into shelters.

"From what we know thus far, there's been tremendous unprecedented devastation, of infrastructure, of property, roads, network connectivity," Zulu said, adding that energy outages and massive disruption of services have spread across the country. He said UN teams are working with national authorities and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) to conduct first assessments and to prioritize life‑sustaining aid.

Why it matters: Zulu said the storm damaged parts of Jamaica considered the island's breadbasket, raising immediate concerns about food security and medium‑term economic effects on tourism and agriculture. "Not only will food crops and fields…