Just before Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in late October 2025, Rose* took her two children to a friend’s sturdy concrete home to keep them safe. When they returned the next morning, everything was gone.
“The house was gone,” she said. “I didn’t even see the roof, just a piece of wood.”
A school provides temporary shelter to people whose lives were turned upside down by Hurricane Melissa.
Entire neighborhoods were reduced to splinters by the hurricane, which damaged or destroyed 36 percent of homes in the western part of the country.
Schools became shelters overnight, turning classrooms into temporary homes. Roads disappeared under water, power outages spread and thousands were cut off for days.
Nearly half a million people found themselves in precarious living conditions and faced great uncertainty.
Among them are Rose, Sharon and Sonia – three mothers whose lives changed overnight.
‘I have a key but no house’
For nine years, Rose lived in her small wooden house, a donated structure that had become her family’s sanctuary.
Now only the basics remain. “I have a key to the house, but no house,” she said. The air smelled of mud and decay. Nothing could be saved.
© IOM/Nicholas Renford
Sonia sits on a bed in a shelter for people who lost their homes due to Hurricane Melissa.
Before the storm, Rose worked as a cruise dispatcher in Negril, and her son as a hotel photographer. Both lost their jobs when the tourism industry shut down.
A few classrooms away, Sharon* is facing a similar struggle. She arrived at the shelter the same day she came home with her two small children, and her father collapsed.
Before the storm she worked as a supervisor at a gas station, but now her workplace is closed indefinitely. Her children sleep on desks in the sweltering heat.
Between the rows of desks and makeshift beds, families share what little they have: a meal, a blanket, a few comforting words. In the midst of loss, small acts of kindness create vulnerable connections.
Living in limbo
More than 1,100 people remain in 88 shelters across Jamaica, and more than 120,000 households are in need of urgent repairs following Melissa’s devastation.
Among them is Sonia*, who fled her seaside home with her grandson with a heart condition in her arms.
“I can’t swim, so I grabbed him and ran,” she remembers.
Since the beginning of the emergency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) teams have supported the Government of Jamaica and the broader UN response by delivering tarpaulins, shelter repair materials, hygiene kits, generators and other supplies to families whose homes were damaged or destroyed.
For women like Rose, Sharon and Sonia, every day is a test of endurance and solidarity. Their homes are gone, but the support of their communities keeps them moving forward.
Their lives, once far apart, are now linked by loss, uncertainty and the slow process of rebuilding.
*Names changed to protect identities
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