Hurricane Beryl razes Caribbean as a Category 4

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Hurricane Beryl ripped off doors, windows and roofs in homes across the southeastern Caribbean on Monday after making landfall on the island of Carriacou as the earliest storm of Category 4 strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters.

There were no immediate reports of possible deaths or injuries, with communications largely down across the region.

Streets from St. Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and scores of other debris scattered by winds up to 150 mph, just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm snapped banana trees in half and killed cows that lay in green pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.

“Right now, I’m real heartbroken,” said Vichelle Clark King as she surveyed her damaged shop in the Barbadian capital of Bridgetown that was filled with sand and water. Beryl was still swiping the southeast Caribbean late Monday afternoon even as it began moving into the Caribbean Sea on a track that would take it just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.

Beryl was located about 125 miles northwest of Grenada and was moving west-northwest at 21 mph, with hurricane conditions possible on Jamaica Wednesday.

A hurricane watch was in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for Grenada; St. Lucia; Martinique; St. Vincent and the Grenadine; the entire southern coast of Haiti; and the southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Punta Palenque westward to the border with Haiti.

“Beryl is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane as its moves over the eastern Caribbean,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

NBC Radio in St. Vincent and the Grenadines said it received reports of roofs being torn off churches and schools as communications began collapsing across the southeast Caribbean.

In nearby Grenada, officials received “reports of devastation” from Carriacou and surrounding islands, said Terence Walters, Grenada’s national disaster coordinator.