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The Ja­maican gov­ern­ment on Wednes­day con­firmed that four peo­ple had been killed af­ter Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, a then Cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­cane, tore through the is­land on Tues­day with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 180 miles per hour (mph).

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, Desmond McKen­zie, who had ear­li­er in­di­cat­ed that there had been no re­ports of deaths as­so­ci­at­ed with the hur­ri­cane, said in a state­ment that the four per­sons had died in St Eliz­a­beth, one of the largest parish­es, lo­cat­ed in the south­west of the is­land and that their bod­ies had washed up by the flood wa­ters gen­er­at­ed by the hur­ri­cane.

“These per­sons are, by all in­di­ca­tions, di­rect vic­tims of the hur­ri­cane, and I am hop­ing that there will be no more fa­tal­i­ties,” McKen­zie said.