A downgraded Hurricane “Melissa” made landfall in Cuba early on Wednesday after ripping a path of destruction across Jamaica, which authorities have designated a “disaster area.”

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said “Melissa,” which it described as an “extremely dangerous hurricane,” had weakened to a Category 3 storm before it made landfall in Santiago de Cuba province on the island’s southern coast.

It hit with maximum sustained winds of approximately 120 miles (195 kilometers) per hour, the NHC said, after fluctuating between Category 3 and Category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Cubans fled the coast as it approached, with local authorities declaring a “state of alert” in six eastern provinces.

Residents told AFP they had been stockpiling food, candles and batteries since Monday.

“We bought bread, spaghetti and ground beef. This cyclone is serious, but we’ll get through it,” Graciela Lamaison told AFP in Santiago de Cuba.

Authorities in Haiti, east of Cuba, ordered the closure of schools, businesses and government offices on Wednesday.

Cuban authorities reported that some 735,000 people have been evacuated so far.

“It will be a very difficult night for all of Cuba, but we will recover,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on social media platform X.

Floraina Duany, 80, prayed on Tuesday to Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, asking that Melissa not cause damage.

“If you are the mistress of the waters, break up (Hurricane Melissa) so it doesn’t do us so much harm,” she told AFP near her home in Playa Siboney, a town 25 miles (15 kilometers) from Santiago de Cuba.

Disaster area

Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane around midday Tuesday with sustained winds of up to 185 mph (295 kph), the worst hurricane to hit the island since meteorological records began. It took hours to cross Jamaica before weakening and then intensifying again.

Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared the island a “disaster area” and authorities warned residents to remain sheltered because of continued flooding and the risk of landslides.

Lisa Sangster, a 30-year-old communications specialist in Kingston, said her home was devastated by the storm.

“My sister... explained that parts of our roof were blown off and other parts caved in and the entire house was flooded,” she told AFP.

The scale of Melissa’s damage in Jamaica was not yet clear. A comprehensive assessment could take days because much of the island was still without power, with communication networks badly disrupted.

Government Minister Desmond McKenzie said several hospitals had been damaged, including in Saint Elizabeth, a coastal district that he said was “underwater.”