Hello, welcome to the program. This is News Hour from the BBC World Service.

I'm Paul Henley and this is coming to you live from London.

Hurricane Barrel currently sweeping westwards across the Caribbean towards Jamaica, is attracting

any number of superlatives.

It's already the first storm since US records began to reach category 4 level in June. It's the earliest to make

category 5 in July and it's a clear symptom according to climate scientists of a warming world and it's getting stronger.

So far this hurricane has left seven people dead and caused huge damage wherever it's hit land.

The Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has declared an island-wide curfew.

I am now declaring the whole of Jamaica to be a disaster area for the next seven days. This is to ensure the safety of everyone during the

passage of the storm and prevent any movement with the intent to carry out criminal activity.

The population of the island has been rushing to buy food, water and fuel.

Nick Davis is our reporter in the capital city, Kingston in Jamaica. I spoke to him an hour ago.

What was the situation? Could he feel the storm coming?

We can't really feel the wind per se but the rain is definitely here. The rain is very

heavy. I've seen heavier if I'm being absolutely truthful but you know this is still early in the game I don't know why I'm using a

sporting analogy but trust me this we've got hours for this storm to stay over us and

that is often where the problem lies because you have people in low-lying areas, you have flooding,

you, that sort of, it just sits here and if you haven't got the drainage systems,

if you haven't got the infrastructure, that's where lives can be put into a serious

serious risk.

I'm gathering your internet is already down.

You're speaking to us on the telephone.

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