Jamaica asks for 'all possible help' after Hurricane Melissa passes through.

Almost a week after Melissa made landfall in Jamaica as one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded, the Caribbean island is mobilizing to help populations severely affected by the catastrophe, which left at least 32 dead.

Much more destructive due to climate change, the hurricane was the strongest to hit the country in 90 years and reached Jamaica as a category 5 phenomenon, the maximum level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds of around 300 km/h.

The tally released by local authorities “is currently 32 dead, but we expect that number to increase,” said Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon during a press conference on Monday (3), mentioning another “eight cases not yet confirmed” so far.

“We need all the help we can get. We need food, water, hygiene items,” said Tackeisha Frazer, a resident of the western province of Westmoreland, one of the hardest hit by Melissa’s fury.

“There are many displaced people who have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. This crisis is overwhelming,” Frazer stressed, while waiting in line at a makeshift distribution center for essential goods.

Millicent McCurdy, one of the volunteers, made an appeal to the international community: “These people are homeless, without clothes, without food or water. They need help,” she insisted.

Residents and volunteers form a human chain to unload a truck full of goods: packages of bottled water, boxes of food, and rolls of toilet paper.

On the island, a man repairs a roof, hammer in hand. A woman and a child hitchhike by the roadside. Goats feed as best they can on branches among the rubble.

In Whitehouse, the sea is turquoise, but the roofs and trees have been ripped away by Melissa's force, while the debris of the destruction piles up.

“It’s a truly terrible, terrible, terrible scene,” laments Diana Mullings, a shopkeeper. “All the wooden structures have disappeared, all of them, all of them, all of them, even the concrete shops.”

On Monday, Jamaica's Minister of Labor, Pearnel Charles Junior, stated that there are still "about 25 isolated communities in the world" that have not been reachable a week after the catastrophe. In the best-case scenario, he said, they will begin receiving supplies dropped from helicopters.