HURRICANE Melissa has battered Jamaica with four deaths, hundreds of homes flattened, thousands left without a roof over their heads, hospitals so badly damaged they had to be closed, and emergency relief supplies destroyed by flood waters two-stories tall.

But, as assessment and recovery efforts began on October 29, Jamaica’s prime minister Andrew Holness called on his countrymen to “hold out.”

He expressed the sentiment while speaking with a mother who was wading through flood water in her house in the parish of St Elizabeth, where the hurricane appeared to have done the most damage.