Hurricane Beryl is racing toward Mexico after killing at least seven people in the southeastern Caribbean

MARTÍN SILVA and FERNANDO LLANO, Associated Press

1 hour ago

This NASA image shows Hurricane Beryl from the International Space Station on Sunday, July 1, 2024. Beryl was barreling toward Jamaica on Wednesday, July 3, as islanders braced for the storm after the powerful Category 4 storm killed at least six people and caused significant damage in the southeastern Caribbean. (NASA via AP)

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Beryl ripped off roofs in Jamaica, snarled fishing boats in Barbados and damaged or destroyed 95 percent of homes on two islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines before thundering toward the Cayman Islands and targeting Mexico’s Caribbean coast, leaving at least seven dead.

The storm, which was the first to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, weakened slightly but remained a major hurricane. Its eye was expected to pass just south of the Cayman Islands overnight.

Emergency shelters were set up on Mexico’s popular Caribbean coast, some small remote coastal communities were evacuated, and even sea turtle eggs were removed from beaches threatened by the storm surge. However, in nightlife hotspots like Playa del Carmen and Tulum, tourists stayed in town one more night.

The Mexican Navy patrolled areas such as Tulum and urged tourists in Spanish and English to prepare for the storm’s arrival.

Late Wednesday night, the storm’s center was located about 560 miles (905 kilometers) east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico. It had maximum sustained winds of 135 mph (215 km/h) and was moving west-northwest at 20 mph (32 km/h). Beryl was expected to make landfall in a sparsely populated area of ​​lagoons and mangroves south of Tulum in the early hours of Friday morning, likely as a Category 2 storm. It was then expected to cross the Yucatan Peninsula and regain strength over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico to make a second impact on the northeast coast of Mexico near the Texas border.

The storm had already shown its destructive potential in a long strip of the southeastern Caribbean.

On Wednesday afternoon, Beryl’s eyewall grazed Jamaica’s south coast, knocking out power and ripping off roofs. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said Jamaica had not yet experienced the “worst that could happen.”

“We can do as much as we humanly can and leave the rest to God,” Holness said.

Several roads in inland Jamaica were damaged by fallen trees and power poles, while some communities in the north were without power, according to the government information service.

The worst probably happened earlier in Beryl’s trajectory, when it collided with two small islands in the Lesser Antilles.

Michelle Forbes, head of the National Emergency Management Organization for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said about 95 percent of homes in Mayreau and Union Island were damaged by Hurricane Beryl.

Three people were reportedly killed in Grenada and Carriacou, and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, authorities said. Three more deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where four people are missing, authorities said.

In Grenada, one person died when a tree fell on a house, Environment Minister Kerryne James told the Associated Press.

The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, has promised to rebuild the archipelago.

The last strong hurricane to hit the southeastern Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

Donna McNaughton, a 43-year-old cardiac physiologist from Scotland, took the approaching storm in Cancun on Wednesday afternoon in her stride.

Her return flight wasn’t until Monday, so she wanted to follow her hotel’s advice and wait.

“We’re not too worried about it. It will subside,” she said. “And in Scotland we’re used to wind and rain anyway.”

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Associated Press journalists John Myers Jr. and Renloy Trail in Kingston, Jamaica, Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City, Coral Murphy Marcos in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Lucanus Ollivierre in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines contributed to this report.