HAVANA/KINGSTON — Hurricane Melissa slammed into Cuba early on Wednesday, hours after causing devastation in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever storm on record to hit that Caribbean island nation.

Melissa hit the southern coast of eastern Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

“Life-threatening storm surge, flash flooding and landslides, and damaging hurricane winds are ongoing this morning,” the center said.

Around 735,000 people were evacuated from their homes in eastern Cuba as the storm approached, authorities said. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned on Tuesday that the storm would cause “significant damage” and urged people to heed evacuation orders.

Melissa had weakened to a still dangerous Category 3 hurricane after roaring ashore near Jamaica’s southwestern town of New Hope on Tuesday, packing sustained winds of up to 185 mph, well above the 157 mph threshold for Category 5, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.

‘SOME LOSS OF LIFE EXPECTED,’ JAMAICAN LEADER SAYS

In southwestern Jamaica, the parish of St. Elizabeth was left “underwater,” an official said, with more than 500,000 residents without power.

“The reports that we have had so far would include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property as well, and damage to our road infrastructure,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on CNN after the storm had passed.

Holness said the government had not received news of any confirmed deaths from the storm, but given the strength of the hurricane and the extent of the damage, “we are expecting that there would be some loss of life.”

As daylight returned to Jamaica early on Wednesday, eyewitness reports and videos on social media showed swaths of downed trees, washed-out roads, and roofs tossed about fields and roadways.

Video of the airport in Montego Bay showed inundated seating areas, broken glass, and collapsed ceilings.

Meteorologists at AccuWeather said Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean, after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988 – the last major storm to make landfall in Jamaica.

Melissa’s winds subsided as the storm drifted past the mountains of Jamaica, lashing highland communities vulnerable to landslides and flooding.

Local media reported at least three deaths in Jamaica during storm preparations, and a disaster coordinator suffered a stroke at the onset of the storm and was rushed to the hospital. Late on Tuesday, many areas remained cut off.

“Our country has been ravaged by Hurricane Melissa but we will rebuild and we will do so even better than before,” Prime Minister Holness said early on Wednesday.

In the Bahamas, next after Cuba in Melissa’s path to the northeast, the government ordered evacuations of residents in the southern portions of that archipelago.

Farther to the east, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic had faced days of torrential downpours leading to at least four deaths, authorities there said.

CUBA BRACES

The storm’s center, churning with violent wind gusts over 125 mph and heavy rain, slammed into Guama, a rural, mountainous area 25 miles west of Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second most populous city.

Authorities had shut down power to virtually all of eastern Cuba, evacuated vulnerable areas, and had asked residents to shelter in place in the provincial capital, Santiago, a city of 400,000 people.

Videos posted by local media showed torrents of brown rainwater rushing down roads through dark towns at the base of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains, not far from the city.

Authorities reported widespread flooding of lowland areas early on Wednesday from Santiago to Guantanamo, where upwards of 35% of the population had been evacuated.

The timing could not be worse for the communist-run Caribbean island. Cuba is already suffering from food, fuel, electricity, and medicine shortages that have complicated life for many, prompting record-breaking migration off the island since 2021.

President Diaz-Canel said Cuba had nonetheless mobilized 2,500 electric line workers to begin recovery immediately following the storm’s passage across the island later on Wednesday.

The hurricane was not expected to directly affect the capital of Havana.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Havana, Zahra Burton in Kingston, Sarah Morland and Brendan O’Boyle in Mexico City, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Emma Farge in Geneva and Anmol Choubey and Ishaan Arora in BengaluruWriting by Andrew HeavensEditing by Frances Kerry and Peter Graff)

Five Senate Republicans joined with Democrats on Tuesday in a vote denouncing President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Brazil.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina sided with Senate Democrats in a 52 to 48 vote against the president’s trade policy, exposing a small rift in the GOP between the president and some lawmakers.

“Protectionists eagerly celebrate the revenue from tariff duties. But they don’t talk nearly as much about how much of that revenue they’ll spend protecting American growers and producers from the avoidable harm of their policies,” McConnell said in a statement defending his vote.

“Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise,” he continued, referencing the late President Ronald Reagan, whose support for free trade became news recently because of an anti-tariff advertisement purchased by the Ontario government.

The Senate’s Tuesday resolution against Trump’s Brazil tariffs is symbolic, and it is not expected to receive a vote – much less pass – in the House. Additional resolutions on Trump’s tariffs are expected to receive votes in the Senate this week.

Vice President JD Vance warned Republicans ahead of the vote not to side against the president in the symbolic gesture, calling a move to buck to White House on tariffs a “big mistake,” according to The Washington Examiner.

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“The point that I made to my Republican colleagues, recognizing there’s a diversity of opinions about it, is that the tariffs give us the ability to put American workers first,” said Vance after meeting with GOP senators on Tuesday. “They force American industry to reinvest in the United States of America instead of a foreign country.”

Prior to Trump’s trade wars, U.S. tariffs on Brazil were roughly 3% in line with its status as a Most Favored Nation for U.S. trade. Brazil’s tariffs on U.S. goods were higher at around 11%, according to the White House.

In April, Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs, placing a minimum 10% levy on all nations, with some receiving a much higher tariff. In July, Trump threatened to hike tariffs on goods from Brazil up to 50% because of its treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison after Brazil’s left-wing government accused him of attempting to overthrow democracy.

Since coming into office in January, Trump has aggressively sought to remake the world’s trade lines, levying relatively exorbitant tariffs on enemies and allies. Through unilateral action on tariffs, Trump has sought to eliminate U.S. trade deficits and to establish leverage for action on drug trafficking and ending international conflicts.

Trump has cited emergency authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to issue most of his tariffs. The president’s tariff authority under the act is currently under review at the Supreme Court.

The president has said if his administration loses the case, the United States “will be a weakened, troubled, financial mess for many, many years to come.”