Satellite images show damage across Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa

Satellite images captured on Wednesday showed the extraordinary damage across Jamaica in the wake of historic Hurricane Melissa.

The mammoth storm left a trail of destruction throughout the Caribbean, starting in Jamaica on Tuesday afternoon before tearing through Cuba and wreaking havoc on Haiti.

By Wednesday night, Melissa had battered the southeast of the Bahamas and is gearing up to pass by Bermuda on Thursday. 

The death toll reached 25 in Haiti on Wednesday night, with at least eight bodies also recovered in Jamaica as first responders continue to hunt for survivors in hard-to-reach areas. 

Entire towns have been leveled by the 185mph winds and flash flooding, with the widespread losses captured by satellite images showing buildings which were standing on Tuesday morning completely destroyed just hours later.

One set of before and after images from Black River, St Elizabeth, showed the near unrecognizable coastline and landscape after the hurricane tore through.

The parish was one of the worst hit regions and reduced to a mud pit after a landslide blocked the main roads in and out. 

Roofs were torn entirely from homes in the area while other buildings, including the town's courthouse, library and churches were reduced to rubble.

'The conditions here are devastating. "Catastrophic" is a mild term based on what we are observing here,' Richard Solomon, the mayor of Black River, said on Wednesday.

'The hospital is totally devastated. When I say we are immobile, police units are down, all the units at the EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) are down because they would have been covered with water throughout the hurricane.

'So at this point in time we’re unable to do any rescuing. We’re unable to respond. We are trying to let everybody know that the situation here is devastating. 

'We need all the help that we can and conditions are going to deteriorate as the day progresses because persons are feeling it already.'

Solomon estimated 16 feet of storm surge ripped through the town in the aftermath of the storm, engulfing both the hospital and the fire station and destroying the emergency supplies they had prepared ahead of time.

The town was home to as many as 8,000 people, who are now facing the devastating task of having to rebuild. 

Local Amiri Bradley told The New York Times 'only places that have four concrete walls are still standing, and usually their roofs are gone.' 

Prime Minister Andrew Holness conducted an aerial tour of Black River and said the town 'has literally been totally destroyed.' 

One tragic story to emerge from the town centered around a local who walked 15 miles to the police station to report that their loved one had died in the storm.

The entire island has been declared a 'disaster area' following the tragedy, and authorities are not yet prepared to provide updated numbers on potential casualties. 

Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 storm and had downgraded to a 'strong' Category 3 by the time it reached Cuba. While it never made landfall in Haiti, the outer rings of the hurricane brought intense rain and winds, which caused flash flooding.

As it now passed through the Bahamas, the storm has been downgraded to a Category 2.

Residents in the Bahamas and nearby Turks and Caicos hunkered down, while some 895 miles (1,440 km) north-east Bermudans prepared for hurricane conditions forecast from Thursday.

U.S. forecaster AccuWeather said Melissa was the Caribbean's third-most intense recorded hurricane, as well as its slowest-moving, which made it particularly destructive.

Dennis Zulu, the United Nations resident coordinator in Jamaica, said 'what we're seeing in preliminary assessments is a country that's been devastated to levels never seen before.'

In Cuba, at least 241 communities remain isolated and without communications hours after the storm passed through the Santiago province, with as many as 140,000 residents directly impacted.

Ahead of Melissa making landfall in Cuba, as many as 735,000 residents were evacuated from their homes in the path of the storm. 

The United States is sending rescue and response teams to assist in recovery efforts in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X. 

Two insiders told NBC that there was a delay in sending aid due to the government shutdown and President Trump's dismantling of the USAID department, alongside Elon Musk.

'You need a flexibility of an agency that can get out there as fast as possible, give people cash to go out and do stuff that has not happened yet,' the former official said.

'And that's the sad part.' 

The insider said that with so many staff furloughed, the department missed the safe window to fly staff out ahead of the storm and had to instead wait until it had passed.