Yachts toppled from their racks, large cruising cats thrown over each other and many broken masts: Hurricane Beryl, which hit the Southern Antilles with unimaginable force yesterday, left a trail of devastation not only in the towns and villages of the islands, but also in the harbours and anchorages. The islands from St Lucia to Grenada were particularly hard hit.
Yesterday at around 5pm CEST, Beryl was the first island to reach the small island of Carriacou north of Grenada. Today, a French sailor sent pictures of yachts hit by the storm via Facebook. You can see rows of boats that have fallen from the gusts in the harbour of Tyrell Bay in the southwest of Carriacou.
No boat has stopped on land
Pierrick Quédinet writes: "Some of the boats in the water capsized or even sank. On land, all the monohull yachts have overturned and many masts are broken." He is not yet able to assess how the crews who fled with their boats into the mangroves fared.
Hurricane Beryl is now located west of the Antilles arc between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. It is expected to hit Jamaica tomorrow on its north-west track. Massive damage is also feared there. Only then will Beryl gradually weaken and reach the Mexican peninsula of Yucatán as a tropical storm towards the end of the week.
Yesterday, Beryl was even upgraded from hurricane category four to five. This makes it one of the most severe hurricanes in existence. At times, it reached wind speeds of 225 kilometres per hour.
One of the most severe hurricanes since records began
What's more, only once before, in the month of July, has a hurricane of comparable severity been observed in the Caribbean. In 2005, Emily raged over the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico for eleven days. At least ten people probably lost their lives in that storm.
Beryl not only destroyed houses, covered roofs and caused massive flooding on many of the Windward Islands. One death has already been reported in Grenada. As it will take some time for the authorities to gain a complete overview of the extent of the destruction, further victims cannot be ruled out at present.
