By: Staff Writer
March 17, 2026
Hurricane Melissa’s damage in October, 2025 cost Jamaica $12 billion in damages, or nearly two thirds of the country’s GDP.
Wayne Henry, Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), said on the panel at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Annual Group meetings held last week that: “So my institution, the Planning Institute of Jamaica, we chair the recovery planning committee that coordinates among ministries, departments, agencies, public service providers, to have an informed mechanism where we engage and determine the priorities for recovery, reconstruction, recovery, restoration following a disaster, and importantly, we lead on the process of doing a detailed damage and loss assessment of any disaster, so you can have some rapid response.
“To give you a crude estimate, we would have the teams that would have training in what we call our damage and loss methodology, or post disaster needs assessment, and we would do a detailed damage assessments on the disaster.
“So, for example, for Melissa, which occurred on October 28 2025 in Jamaica, we’ve estimated that damage, overall damage and loss, as well as additional costs of the hurricane, to be some $12.2 billion US dollars, which is over 56 percent of our GDP.”
Hurricane Melissa was a record-breaking Category 5 hurricane that caused catastrophic destruction in Jamaica in late October 2025. It is officially recognized as the most powerful storm to ever strike the island, surpassing 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert.
Henry also said: “So something that was very surprising was the strength and magnitude, the intensity of the hurricane. And so, you’re looking at a system that can last a few or maybe several hours, but has long term impacts.
“You’re looking at loss of life, in some cases, loss of livelihoods. You’re looking at damage to infrastructure, whether loss of electricity, loss of water supply, and these can affect people and communities for a relatively long time. And so, as we do the coordination, we formulate a plan, informed by the assessment, to determine what our reconstruction would look like. We’ve estimated that, in this case, between three to five years to get to these levels, and we would say pre Melissa levels, but really we want to build forward better, so we have to improve our resilience as we reconstruct.”
As of March 2026, Jamaica has officially entered the reconstruction phase following the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Melissa. Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that the country successfully closed the recovery phase—which focused on restoring essential services like electricity, water, and schools—and is now prioritizing long-term rebuilding.