Just before Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica in late October 2025, Rose* took her two children to a friend’s sturdy concrete house to keep them safe. When they returned the next morning, everything was gone.
“The house was gone,” he said. “I didn’t even see the roof, just a piece of wood.”
A school serves as a temporary shelter for people whose lives were upended by Hurricane Melissa.
Entire neighborhoods were reduced to splinters by the hurricane, which left 36 percent of homes in the western part of the country damaged or destroyed.
Schools became shelters overnight, turning classrooms into temporary homes. Roads disappeared under water, power outages spread and thousands of people were isolated for days.
Almost half a million people were left in precarious living conditions and facing deep 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 refuge.
Now only the foundations remain. “I have the key to the house, but I don’t have a house,” he said. The air stank of mud and decay. Nothing could be saved.
Sonia sitting on a bed at a shelter for people who lost their homes due to Hurricane Melissa.
Before the storm, Rose worked as a cruise ship dispatcher in Negril and her son worked as a hotel photographer. Both lost their jobs when the tourism industry closed.
A few classrooms away, Sharon* faces a similar struggle. She arrived at the shelter with her two young children the same day she came home and her father’s son collapsed.
Before the storm she worked as a gas station supervisor, now her workplace is closed indefinitely. Their children sleep on desks in the stifling heat.
Among the rows of desks and makeshift beds, families share the little they have: a meal, a blanket, a few words of comfort. In the midst of loss, small acts of kindness create fragile connections.
Living in limbo
More than 1,100 people remain in 88 shelters in Jamaica and more than 120,000 homes are in urgent need of repairs following the destruction of Melissa.
Among them is Sonia*, who fled her home on the coast carrying her grandson with a heart condition.
“I don’t know how to swim, so I grabbed him and ran,” he recalled.
Since the start of the emergency, International Organization for Migration (IOM) teams have supported the Government of Jamaica and the broader UN response, delivering tarpaulins, shelter repair materials, hygiene kits, generators and other essential items to families whose homes were damaged or destroyed.
For women like Rose, Sharon and Sonia, every day is a test of resistance and solidarity. Their homes no longer exist, but the support of their communities helps them move forward.
Their lives, once very separate, are now united by loss, uncertainty and the slow process of rebuilding.
*Names changed to protect identities.