Atlanta's Jamaican community rallies as Hurricane Melissa batters the island

Jason Walker remembers the last time Jamaica faced a storm this powerful.

It was September 1988 when Hurricane Gilbert — a Category 5 monster — ripped across the island, flattening crops, destroying homes and cutting power for weeks. At least 45 people died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.

Walker and his family were among the lucky ones. They only lost the roof of their Kingston home.

“I’ll never forget right after Gilbert left,” he said. “I stood up on what was left of the scaffold that used to be part of the roof, and I looked around Kingston. I saw houses without roofs, trees gone. I could see straight to Cuba, which I hadn’t been able to do before. I had never seen anything like it and never thought I would see anything like it again.”

That might change for those still living on the Caribbean island.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Melissa — a Category 5 storm with winds approaching 185 miles per hour — slammed into Jamaica, threatening to surpass Gilbert’s wrath.

The massive hurricane, one of the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin, is expected to devastate parts, if not all, of the island, which is known as much for its cultural influence as for its tourism.

Cleanup from rain, flooding, and wind is expected to take months, if not years.

“I lived through Hurricane Gilbert,” said Evette Taylor-Reynolds, president of the 48-year-old Atlanta Jamaican Association. “This is no Gilbert. This is more than what Gilbert was.”

Like many Jamaicans now living in Atlanta, Walker and Taylor-Reynolds have been glued to the latest reports on Hurricane Melissa. They’ve spent the last few days without sleep, trying to make arrangements for family members back home, while coordinating relief efforts.

For Walker, that includes his 91-year-old mother, who still lives in that same hilltop house in Kingston.

“I’ve been trying to make sure everybody is where they’re supposed to be,” said Walker, the president of Caribbean Georgia Votes, a nonprofit aimed at mobilizing civic engagement across the diaspora. “I had to move some family members, including my mother, to a safer place Monday night because once we looked at how powerful this thing is we knew that the house just couldn’t stand up to that.”

Walker’s mother was relocated to another home deeper inside Kingston with a stronger foundation and a slab roof.

“They’ve been saying it’s just as or more powerful than Gilbert, and Gilbert was catastrophic,” said Walker, who also hosts the online “Jay Walker Buzz Show.” “So we are all very nervous.”

As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica near New Hope, about 100 miles from Kingston, the capital.

“This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation! Take cover now! Do not leave your shelter as the eye passes over,” the National Hurricane Center warned, citing devastating winds, flooding and landslides.

Melissa is projected to dump up to 30 inches of rain during its slow, violent march across the island, according to Jamaica’s Meteorological Service. Storm surge is expected to peak at 13 feet.

“Total structural failure(s) are likely near the path of Melissa’s center,” the agency said. “Widespread infrastructure damage, power and communication outages” are likely to isolate communities, it added.

Georgia’s Jamaican population is relatively small, representing about 0.7% of the state’s residents, or roughly 75,000 people, according to the Census Bureau’s latest five-year American Community Survey. Still, its presence is deeply felt in certain parts of the state.

There are vibrant enclaves of Jamaicans in areas you might not expect. In Newton County, east of Atlanta, Jamaicans make up about 3% of the population, the fourth-highest percentage in the nation. Only the Bronx and Brooklyn in New York City and Broward County in Florida rank higher.

Across metro Atlanta’s five core counties — Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett — an estimated 48,000 of the 4.3 million residents identify as Jamaican, reflecting a small but growing Caribbean influence within the region’s cultural fabric.

“Atlanta’s Jamaican community may be small, but it’s powerful,” said Caroline Sulal, who is also from Kingston and lives in Ellenwood.

Best known as a tropical getaway, Jamaica has also produced some of the world’s most influential figures. It was the birthplace of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the civil rights leader who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association; reggae legend Bob Marley; and an extraordinary lineup of Olympians, including Usain Bolt, Merlene Ottey, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the island in 1965, just three years after Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom, to rest and write.

As Melissa continues to assault the island, Atlanta’s Jamaican community has been engaging in relief efforts. Sulal is one of several local leaders helping to coordinate the response.

“We’re already mobilizing,” she said. “We’ve been calling the Jamaican Embassy and identifying drop-off sites around the metro area in places like in Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Fulton. This is our way of helping from here.”

On Monday, they met with the Jamaican ambassador to the United States to coordinate plans and begin raising money and supplies.

“Unfortunately, because we have so many hurricanes, we know what’s going to be needed,” Walker said.

But Sulal added that this one feels different.

“Even from afar, we feel the fear and helplessness,” she said. “I’ve been urging loved ones to stay in shelters because the flatlands flood with just a little rain.”

For Walker, Taylor-Reynolds and Sulal, the storm is more than a natural disaster — it’s a testament to Jamaica’s enduring spirit and the resilience of its people, both on the island and across the diaspora.

Even amid fear and sleepless nights, they return again and again to the same place — a deep pride, an abiding love for their homeland, and an unshakable belief that Jamaica will rise again.

“Those beautiful palm trees may be gone if the winds are as strong as predicted,” Taylor-Reynolds said. “The only good thing is they can be replanted, and they’ll grow again.”

After roiling across Jamaica, Melissa is forecast to cross over southeastern Cuba on Wednesday morning before heading back out to the Atlantic and avoiding the U.S. coast.

So far this hurricane season, the United States has been spared from a major hurricane landfall, according to the National Hurricane Center. Tropical Storm Chantal crossed over land near Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, on July 6.

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(Staff reporter Rosana Hughes contributed to this report.)

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