By William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)

BELIZE CITY, Mon. Oct. 27, 2025

   The safety of 70 Belizean students, who were unable to evacuate from Jamaica before the commercial airlines suspended all flights to the island, has drawn into sharp focus the massive Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, which is expected to make landfall in Jamaica early Tuesday morning, October 27.

   Some of the students who live off campus have taken refuge at Belize’s honorary consul Ms. Elecif E. Arthurs’ residence in Kingston, Prime Minister Hon. John Briceño told the media at the Lord Michael Ashcroft Convention Center City on Monday morning. The Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs have been in communication with Jamaican authorities to verify that the remainder have either decided to weather the storm at their residence halls on the University of West Indies Mona campus, where the buildings are strong enough to withstand a hurricane; while others have sought refuge in public shelters which have been open from over the Sunday, when authorities began evacuating residents from flood prone areas of Jamaica.

   The students first expressed their concern on social media over the weekend, when they learnt that several other Caribbean nations including Barbados, the Bahamas and Grenada had evacuated their students, but that the government of Belize had made no arrangements to repatriate them. Grocery shelves across the island rapidly emptied last week Thursday and Friday as the storm approached, making it difficult for the students to stock up on food supplies before the storm, as law students Israeli Cal and Darwin McFadzean shared from Jamaica.

   Briceño admitted that the government has no plans to repatriate the students, but would make every effort to get emergency supplies to them after the storm.

   Hurricane Melissa has strengthened from a “tropical storm” with 45 mile-per-hour winds, to a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with 175 mile-per-hour winds, according to latest weather advisory from the National Hurricane Center in Miami of the National Oceanic and Aeronautic Administration (NOAA) at 5 o’clock Monday. Located at 16.7 North 78 West or about 91 miles south of Treasure Beach, Jamaica, Melissa was moving slowly northwestward at 3 mph. Melissa is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge as much as 13 feet above ground level.

   The hurricane is expected to dump over 30 inches of rain as it passes over Jamaica. The authorities are already preparing for floods and landslides, which could render many roads impassable. In a post on X, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness urged “every Jamaican to prepare, stay indoors during the storm, and comply with evacuation orders. … We will weather this storm and rebuild stronger.”

   Melissa has gathered considerable energy from the warm sea temperatures of the Caribbean, which had not seen a tropical storm so far this year. The sheer size of the storm has already drenched both Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) in torrential rains, destroying 35 acres of corn in Haiti where millions of people were already starving, and causing widespread flooding and mudslides in the DR, destroying 750 homes and displacing more than 3,760 people. At least 3 persons have died in Haiti, and one in the Dominican Republic, and some 48 communities have been cut off by the floodwaters.

   Melissa is expected to make landfall on Cuba’s southern coast near Santiago de Cuba on Wednesday morning, and Cuban authorities are preparing for 20 inches of rain. Hurricane Melissa will still have winds in excess of 75 mph when it reaches The Bahamas on Wednesday afternoon, October 29.

   The United States Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft, which NOAA sent flying inside the eye of the storm on Monday morning, experienced such severe turbulence in the southwestern eyewall that they had to abandon the mission.

   Jamaica has not experienced a storm of this magnitude since Hurricane Gilbert of 1988 which peaked as a Category 5 but made landfall in Jamaica as a Category 3 hurricane with 130 mph winds. For a Belizean scale of reference, Melissa may be an even more powerful storm than Hurricane Hattie, which was also a Category 5, before making landfall in Belize as a Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph sustained winds that flattened Belize City in 1961.