Hurricane Beryl has left massive destruction across multiple Caribbean island nations in its wake. Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Jamaica are among the countries impacted by the massive storm.

CARICOM Secretary General, Dr. Carol Barnett spoke with ZNS News on Thursday about the Caribbean Community’s response to the damage left by the hurricane. Dr. Barnett said, “we haven’t had a full summary report from Jamaica but we understand that there was significant damage to infrastructure. The fisheries and agriculture sector had a lot of damage as well. The storm passed this morning south of the Cayman Islands and we’re awaiting word on the impact there.”

Hurricane Beryl is expected to head toward the Yucatan Peninsula north of Belize. Dr. Barnett said, “Belize should expect to get some tropical storm force winds but not necessarily it would seem that they would receive the hurricane force winds. So it’s been as we would say quite a record breaking storm cause the records don’t show any category five storms in June and for us that’s something we have to take into account cause we have July through to November to carry through on the hurricane season and its really causing a lot of damage already.”

The CARICOM Secretary General also spoke to the impact of climate change on the Caribbean and the responsibility of developed nations. She said, “we are hoping that the international community and those who are the ones who cause the greatest impact on climate change do the right thing and begin to bring us back to where we can achieve that 1.5 degrees Celsius that we’ve been saying for years is what we need to maintain to ensure that as small island developing states we can survive climate change.”

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