Jamaica braces for Hurricane Melissa
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the strongest storm the island of Jamaica has ever known approaches landfall, we hear from people on the ground, from the Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, and from a meteorologist.
Also in the programme: with more evidence of atrocities emerging from the Sudanese city of El Fasher, we hear from the United Nations' Coordinator on Sudan; and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, talks to Newshour about the meaning of trust.
(IMAGE: a man wearing a protective suit cycles on a street, as Hurricane Melissa approaches, in Kingston, Jamaica, October 27, 2025 / CREDIT: REUTERS/Octavio Jones)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello, welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley, and the programme is coming to you live from London. |
| 0:16.7 | First, it is the strongest storm to hit the earth this year, and the strongest the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean has ever known. |
| 0:25.3 | Hurricane Melissa is about to reach land there. |
| 0:27.9 | Already, three people have died and several have been injured during preparations for the storm to hit. |
| 0:33.7 | As it approaches, the Category 5 storm has 175 mile or 280 kilometre an hour winds |
| 0:41.3 | and the capacity to dump a metre of rain very quickly. |
| 0:45.5 | Claudia Solomon lives in the town of White House on the south coast. |
| 0:50.1 | Everybody is anxious and everybody is worried, more than in another storm I have faced. |
| 0:55.2 | We know we're dealing with something really, really big. |
| 0:58.8 | The trees are bending right now. |
| 1:01.8 | We're not quite sure when it makes landfall. |
| 1:05.0 | All of us in Jamaica, you know, we have got fear in country. |
| 1:08.1 | We pray for the best. |
| 1:10.2 | Shortly before we came on air, I spoke to Richard Anderson, a production manager for the Omega Church, |
| 1:16.4 | a Christian radio station based in Kingston on the eastern side of Jamaica. |
| 1:21.8 | Yeah, I'm at the radio station. Outside at this point, the rain is just a bit of a drizzle. |
| 1:26.8 | The wind is beginning to pick up, you know, so you can get the sense that it's getting close. |
| 1:31.9 | The power has been going in and out, but it's not really full hurricane conditions yet. |
| 1:37.1 | People must be nervous there, are they? |
| 1:39.3 | Yeah, you can see that there are people are taking it serious. |
| 1:42.1 | I mean, I've been getting messages on people who said they have not slept away. |
... |
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