With Jamaica now feeling the worsening effects of Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) is reporting that approximately 240,000, or 35% of its customers, are now without electricity. JPS says St Elizabeth, Manchester, Hanover, and St James are the worst-affected parishes. It says approximately 75% of customers in these parishes are without power due to the impact of the hurricane.
The light and power company says that there has been an increase in outages across several parishes, noting that several generation units, critical high voltage substations, transmission, and distribution lines across the island have been forced out of service by hurricane-force winds and lightning.
