Hurricane Melissa: Power Restored to Majority of Affected Customers as Shelter Numbers Drop

• JPS reports 68 percent of affected customers restored; Westmoreland remains most challenging zone
• Shelter population falls to 27,000 as transitional housing program begins accepting applications
• Prime Minister announces expedited building permits for Negril reconstruction zone
• ODPEM closes formal emergency response phase; long-term recovery office established
• Jamaica’s central bank estimates 3.2 percentage point GDP growth reduction for 2025
• First post-storm property listings appear in Westmoreland as distressed sellers emerge

Five days after Hurricane Melissa’s landfall, the arc of Jamaica’s emergency response was bending decisively toward recovery. Power was returning to homes and businesses at an accelerating pace, shelter populations were declining as residents returned or moved to transitional options, and the government was beginning to shift the apparatus of emergency management toward the longer, slower work of reconstruction.

The Jamaica Public Service Company reported Friday that 68 percent of customers who had lost power during the storm had been restored, with daily restoration rates running at roughly 8 to 10 percent of the original outage base. The company’s chief executive said the pace would slow significantly over the coming week as crews worked through the most heavily damaged sections of the Westmoreland network, where in some communities virtually every distribution pole and transformer had been destroyed and rebuilding from the ground up was required.

Shelters Emptying, Slowly

The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management reported a shelter population of approximately 27,000 persons Friday evening, down from the 78,000 peak registered before landfall and the 41,000 still in shelters Thursday. The decline reflected a combination of residents returning to homes that had survived the storm without catastrophic damage, individuals moving to stay with family members elsewhere on the island, and the first enrollments in a government transitional housing program that had opened applications Friday morning.

The transitional housing program, administered by the National Housing Development Corporation in partnership with ODPEM, provided eligible displaced persons with access to either government-owned transitional housing units or rental subsidies for private accommodation during the reconstruction period. Officials said approximately 2,400 applications had been received in the program’s first day of operation, with processing expected to take 72 hours per application under expedited review procedures.

ODPEM Director General Marcia Bennett announced Friday that the formal emergency response phase was being closed and a long-term recovery office, to be co-located with the Planning Institute of Jamaica, was being established to oversee the multiyear reconstruction program. Ms. Bennett said the office would be staffed with specialists in housing, infrastructure, economic recovery, and community engagement, and would serve as the primary coordination point for all recovery-related activities across affected parishes.

Expedited Permits for Negril

In a move that drew both praise and scrutiny, Prime Minister Holness announced Friday that the government would establish an expedited permitting process for reconstruction in Negril and the other most heavily damaged coastal communities, with a target of processing qualifying applications within 30 days rather than the 90 to 120 day standard timeline. The expedited process would apply to reconstruction of structures that met current building code and hazard zone setback requirements; structures proposing to rebuild below minimum elevation requirements or within mandated coastal setbacks would not qualify for fast-tracking.

The announcement was welcomed by resort operators eager to begin reconstruction and by local contractors who said the prospect of months of permitting delays had been a source of significant concern. Environmental advocates, however, expressed worry that the expedited process would not provide adequate scrutiny of applications proposing development in sensitive coastal ecosystems, particularly in areas where Melissa’s surge had stripped vegetation from coral reef habitat and seagrass beds that serve as natural buffers against future storm impacts.

Economic Projections Worsen

The Bank of Jamaica Friday released a preliminary assessment of Hurricane Melissa’s impact on the island’s macroeconomic outlook, projecting that the storm would reduce GDP growth in 2025 by approximately 3.2 percentage points relative to the pre-storm forecast. The central bank had projected 2.1 percent real GDP growth for Jamaica in 2025 before Melissa struck; the post-storm projection, depending on the pace of recovery, now ranged from a best case of 0.3 percent growth to a downside scenario of negative 1.1 percent contraction.

The Bank of Jamaica said the tourism sector impact was the dominant driver of the revised outlook, with the forced closure of Negril-area properties and the disruption to airlift capacity expected to reduce visitor arrivals significantly in the fourth quarter of 2025 and into early 2026. Agricultural losses in the western parishes would affect food supply chains and prices, with the bank projecting a temporary increase in domestic food price inflation of 2 to 3 percentage points above the pre-storm baseline over the next three to four months.

The Real Estate Aftershock

Real estate professionals in western Jamaica were reporting an unusual and significant early development in the post-storm property market: the appearance of distressed sale listings for storm-damaged properties in Westmoreland and Hanover, within days of the storm’s passage. Several listings had appeared on major Jamaican property portals by Friday, offering damaged residential and commercial properties at prices reflecting sellers’ urgent need for liquidity rather than any assessment of post-repair value.

The phenomenon was described by real estate attorneys as a double-edged development. On one side, distressed sellers — often elderly or financially marginal property owners who lacked the resources or will to undertake major repairs — were exercising their right to liquidate damaged assets. On the other side, there was concern that buyers with ready capital, including foreign investors, would be positioned to acquire large volumes of western Jamaica real estate at depression prices, potentially accelerating a consolidation of coastal land ownership that could change the character of communities that survived Melissa’s winds and water.

“We have seen this pattern before after major Caribbean hurricanes,” said Dr. Marianne Chen, a property economist at the University of the West Indies. “The wealthiest actors in the post-disaster real estate market are not the families who lived there. We need to think carefully, as a society, about whether the reconstruction of western Jamaica will rebuild what existed for the people who were there, or build something new for people who weren’t.”

The government said Friday it was monitoring the post-storm property market and would consider whether additional protections or restrictions were needed to ensure that Jamaican residents in the affected parishes had a fair opportunity to retain and rebuild their properties. No specific measures were announced. The questions were, for now, being asked. The answers would take shape over the weeks and months ahead.