Members of the Jamaican community of New York City were anxiously reaching out to family and friends in the Caribbean nation and preparing to go to their aid as Hurricane Melissa bore down on the island.
Willa Blair, 54, sat in a blue lawn chair outside the Taste of Jamaica food truck selling fresh juice on Monday in Manhattan. She arrived in the United States 16 years ago from Kingston, Jamaica’s capital and largest city, and still has members of her large family on the island.
“She’s moving like a baby trying to creep,” Ms. Blair said of the hurricane’s slow advance. “That means she’s going to linger a little in Jamaica, and that is a big problem.”
In New York City, there are about 218,000 people of Jamaican ancestry, about two-thirds of whom are immigrants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the Weather Channel, the “monster” storm is packing 175 M.P.H. winds and life-threatening rainfall as it cuts a path through the Caribbean. It is expected to strike Jamaica on Monday evening into Tuesday.
Some aid groups like the American Friends of Jamaica, a nonprofit organization based in New York that supports Jamaican charities and social initiatives, have started collecting donations for disaster relief. The organization has raised over $150,000 as of early Monday evening, according to its website.
Horace Davis, president of the Caribbean American Society of New York, a community organization that aids Caribbeans in New York and abroad, said the group was on standby and evaluating the situation, waiting to hear how it can help.
“We know that the impact is going to be significant,” Mr. Davis said. “As soon as we’re able to hear from the country what the needs are, then we will mobilize.”
On the Manhattan corner, Ms. Blair said people in the United States and families in Jamaica were doing the best they could while apart.
“The only thing we can do is pray, pray, pray,” she said.
Ms. Blair said she and her seven siblings had talked for hours over the phone on Monday, which has brought them closer. Three of the siblings are hunkered down about nine miles outside Kingston in the community of Portmore, St. Catherine, she said.
“We have never talked this long,” she said. “This is a time when we need each other.”
Her only request of the storm, she said: “Melissa, go back where you are coming from.”
A few blocks away, Rihanna’s song “Lift Me Up” filled Jerk House, a small, cafeteria-style Caribbean restaurant as customers waited to be served.
Stacy Miller, 32, a waitress, said she was worried about her 10-year-old son and family members back in Jamaica. Some residents have already lost electricity, according to her relatives on the island.
Although her loved ones are deeply concerned, she said the people of Jamaica were accustomed to riding out hurricanes.
“Everyone is worried about it, but it’s a normal thing,” she said standing at the restaurant’s register. The island has hurricanes “every year, some worse than some,” she added.
At the Caribbean restaurant Rusty’s Flavor in Harlem, Yanique Brown, 31, said she had spoken by phone on Monday to her mother, who was in Spanish Town, a city in the southeastern parish of St. Catherine, where the wind and rain had grown hostile.
Ms. Brown, who was born in St. Catherine, remembers navigating Hurricane Dean, which toppled buildings and led to several fatalities on the island in 2007. During that storm, Ms. Brown remembers, neighbors went door-to-door to ensure everyone had food and basic necessities.
The powerful gusts and heavy rainfall of Hurricane Melissa have kept a similar informal safety net from repeating itself this time, she said.
As the storm intensifies, Ms. Brown’s mother, Lorna Brown, 63, said via phone from Jamaica that she was concerned about getting access to basic necessities amid the approaching storm.
“We don’t know if we’re going to have lights, if we’re going to have water — we don’t know what is taking place,” Lorna Brown said.
Samantha Latson is a Times reporter covering New York City and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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