KINGSTON - More than 25,000 peo­ple were packed in­to shel­ters yes­ter­day af­ter the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them tem­porar­i­ly home­less. Dixon said 77% of the is­land was with­out pow­er.

The out­ages com­pli­cat­ed as­sess­ing the dam­age be­cause of “a to­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion black­out” in ar­eas, Richard Thomp­son, act­ing di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Ja­maica’s Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Emer­gency Man­age­ment, told the Na­tion­wide News Net­work ra­dio sta­tion. “Re­cov­ery will take time, but the gov­ern­ment is ful­ly mo­bilised,” Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said in a state­ment.

“Re­lief sup­plies are be­ing pre­pared, and we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to re­store nor­mal­cy quick­ly.”