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Today’s article is a mixture of a piece I began writing when Melissa, then a tropical storm, first threatened Jamaica. The other parts are post-Hurricane Melissa news.
Like many people, I did not know then that this storm would quickly develop into a monster hurricane that would wreak havoc on the country. At the time, I had, quite by accident, just read the excellent 152-page book titled Post-Disaster Needs Assessment of the Impact of Hurricane Beryl on Jamaica ̶ July 3, 2024.
The book should be required to be read by private and public sector leaders. It offered granular details of the social and economic impacts of an important and familiar event, highlighted lessons to be learned, and discussed solutions to problems.
The book was also timely because of the island’s vulnerability to climate change. The interval that elapsed between the book’s publication and the Category 5 Hurricane Melissa event was short. This factor, when coupled with our ‘soon come’ and dislike-of-reading cultures, makes it unlikely that the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s recommendations would be implemented.
The preliminary price tab of Hurricane Melissa is estimated at US$6 billion to US$7 billion, according to the prime minister. It is hoped that this amount and the scale of the problems associated with the restoration and recovery efforts will spur the PIOJ to write a second book that can be used as a tool to help mitigate the impacts of future catastrophes – built on the template of the Hurricane Beryl book.
Hurricane Melissa’s path through the Caribbean last month, according to The New York Times, was made more violent by climate change. A scientific analysis released on Thursday by researchers from World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that the hurricane had seven per cent stronger wind speeds than a similar one in a world that has not been warmed by the burning of fossil fuels. The rate of rainfall inside the eyewall of the storm was 16 per cent more intense.
The WWA initiative was formed in 2014. Its research team consists of persons from several institutions, including the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. WWA works with climate scientists and other experts in the country on which the study is being conducted, providing critical knowledge and insights on weather, databases, modelling, and impacts.
WWA says on its website that rapid attribution studies are undertaken to give a robust, scientific answer to the question: was climate change to blame? The results of the attribution studies are published days or weeks after an event to inform discussions about climate change, mitigation, and adaptation, while the impacts of the extreme weather event are still fresh in the minds of the public and policymakers, and decisions about rebuilding are being made.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28 with wind speeds of 185 miles per hour. The New York Times article quoted one of WWA’s founders, and a climatologist at Imperial College London, Friederike Otto, as saying that even a minor increase in wind speed can cause substantial damage. Dr Otto estimated that the increase in Melissa’s wind speed may have added more than one billion dollars in additional damage.
Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions (formerly known as Air Worldwide) is a provider in catastrophe and extreme event modelling. They quantify and manage the financial impact of large-scale catastrophes before and after they occur.
Verisk estimates that insurance industry losses to onshore property in Jamaica from Hurricane Melissa will range between US$2.2 billion and US$4.2 billion. This estimate excludes damage to infrastructure. The company said in its report that only about two out of every 10 houses in Jamaica is insured.
Melissa “set several records over its life cycle. It was the most intense hurricane to make landfall in Jamaica since record keeping began and was tied for the most intense hurricane landfall globally since record keeping began by minimum central pressure (along with the 1935 Labour Day hurricane) and by maximum wind speed (with the 1935 Labour Day hurricane and 2019 Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas),” Verisk said.
The PIOJ’s book about Hurricane Beryl stands in sharp contrast to the Financial Services Commission’s insipidly cold, abstract, insurance industry statistical review for the quarter ending June 2025. I read it after I reviewed the PIOJ book. The FSC data creates an illusion that the industry’s operations are divorced from the lives and livelihoods of people living in Jamaica. PIOJ’s book is targeted at a wide audience and offers ideas and solutions to problems.
The FSC’s performance analysis is backward looking and disconnected from Hurricane Beryl, which caused significant economic disruption, with damage and losses estimated at $56.7 billion, or 1.9 per cent of 2023 nominal GDP and, almost certainly, affected insurers’ financial results during the first two quarters of 2025. Despite that impact on the nation’s economy, it was unclear what effects Hurricane Beryl had on the financial performance of the non-life insurance industry.
Portfolio responsibility for the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, ODPEM, was transferred from the Ministry of Local Government to the Office of the Prime Minister in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. There has also been a change in leadership.
The changes reminded me of my May 16, 2021, article, ‘The Mishandling of ODPEM’, in which I wrote that, four days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, US President George W. Bush uttered the eight words that have gone down among the most recognised of his presidency: ‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’. That statement was seen as endorsing the work of FEMA Director Michael Brown. FEMA is the US counterpart of ODPEM.
President Bush ended up being blamed for the poor government response to Katrina. Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness and Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie, be warned!
In another column ‘Insurance implications of climate change’, written about two weeks ago, I questioned the wisdom of placing ODPEM in the Ministry of Local Government. That ministry cannot supervise this agency. The way it has managed the ‘Harrow affair’ and its continuing silence on the matter have shown that it does not have a clue about corporate governance or risk and emergency management.
Have the chickens finally come home to roost?
Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com
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