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The rumble of large machinery, whine of chainsaws, and chopping of machetes echoed through communities across the northern Carib­bean yesterday as they dug out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and surveyed the damage left behind.

In Jamaica, government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach dozens of isolated communities in the island’s southeast that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.

battling floods: A man pushes a wheelbarrow through a flooded street yesterday in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa in Petit-Goave, Haiti.