Coconut water from downed trees and fallen breadfruit are what some residents of New Holland and Middle Quarters, St Elizabeth, say they have been subsisting on since the passage of Hurricane Melissa on Tuesday.

On Thursday about 1:00 pm, when the Jamaica Observer gained access to the area, the first thing residents asked for was a bottle of water.

“A now hungry a go lick,” said 76-year-old Jervis Seaton, a resident of Middle Quarters. “I saved a whole heap of people, giving them coconut water to drink. We can’t get any water to drink, no clean water,” he lamented.

The situation with food is similar, with one man describing it as a famine.

“Food? All of the breadfruit trees blew down, everything is gone. I cut a nice bunch of plantain, I can’t give it away, I have to wait for it to ripe and eat them two by two. We have breadfruit that could be roasted, but it [spoils easily],” Seaton told the Observer.

His house, which he said had survived all the other hurricanes that lashed the country, was flattened by Melissa along with his workshop.

“[Hurricane] Beryl come start shake me up and this one…I don’t like no woman named Melissa,” he said while chopping coconuts from a tree that had collapsed on top of his workshop.

Beryl sideswiped the island’s south coast in July 2024 leaving heavy damage mostly in southern parishes.

Monica Beckford, who lives in New Holland with her daughter and grandson, had a similar experience. A tree fell on the concrete area of her roof, cracking it, while the wind took away the zinc sheeting on the other side during the storm.

“Not even water we don’t have, the food got wet, we don’t have anything,” she told the Observer as she hung her clothes on barbed wire so she could have something dry to wear.

“Water swept through here like a river. And you can’t cook anything that got wet in those [conditions]. Somebody brought a chicken for me, and that’s what we have, and we don’t see what we are going to do with it,” she said, pointing to the unusable stove and lack of electricity.

“My neighbour came and asked me for something dry because she doesn’t have anything that’s not soaking wet,” Beckford explained, pointing to the wet mattress that was still in use in her own home.

Throughout the day, people from across the parish who had converged on the capital Black River rushed into stores and supermarkets, pulling out anything that they could, including cases of water, juice, cans of Arizona, and cases of Malta.

A vendor in Black River market, which has been practically flattened, asked: “Nothing? You guys didn’t bring anything from Kingston for us? You nuh know seh we inna famine conditions?” He then walked away, dejected.

The team had already given away all water and sweetened drinks brought into the area to other residents before alighting in Black River.

Before Thursday, access to Black River was blocked by downed trees and other debris. However, the blockages were cleared by Jamaica Defence Force Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART), enough to allow vehicular traffic.

Monica Beckford, who lives in New Holland, hangs some of her clothes on barbed wire to dry them on Thursday, after rainwater soaked her belongings during Hurricane Melissa.