Hurricane Beryl did its best to shut down Jamaica, but the country’s airports and seaports were up and running on Friday, according to the ministry of tourism.
In Kingston, Norman Manley International Airport reopened at 5 a.m. Friday. In Montego Bay, Sangster International Airport resumed service at 6 p.m. Thursday. And in Ocho Rios, Ian Fleming International Airport is now open.
Jamaica’s cruise ports — Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, and Falmouth — also reopened for passenger ships.
Beryl made landfall in Tulum, Mexico, early Friday morning as a stronger-than-expected Category 2 hurricane, but that strength quickly bled out as it sped across the Yucatan Peninsula.
Forecasters expect Beryl — now a tropical storm — to re-emerge over the Gulf of Mexico later Friday, where it has just enough time to re-strengthen again into a Category 1 hurricane before potentially making the first U.S. landfall of the season over South Texas.
Jamaica and the Caribbean are still suffering from the storm, which claimed at least seven lives in the eastern Caribbean and two in Jamaica and destroyed most housing on some small islands. In Jamaica, several homes remained without roofs.
But Jamaican officials said the worst was over and the country could handle new visitors.
“Jamaica is open for business and, once again, the resilience of the Jamaican people is on full display,” Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said in a statement. “We are grateful that there has been no wide-scale impact to our general tourism infrastructure and our tourism industry is fully operational.”
The ministry of tourism said workers and guests at the country’s hotels and resorts remained safe through the hurricane. Bartlett said the country’s message to travelers is “Jamaica is ready for you.”
Before Beryl, Jamaica was enjoying a record year for tourism. Two million people have visited this year through May, a record for the time period.
“Tourism obviously was hit, especially the closing of the airports,” said Denis Zulu, United Nations resident coordinator for Jamaica, but “Jamaica quickly moved toward opening up the airports.”
Zulu made his comments to reporters during a news conference on Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York. The Jamaican government “is moving seriously,” he said, to ensure access to the resorts and the roads that lead to them, so that employees can get back to work there.
Caribbean flights to and from Miami
Flights from Miami International Airport to Kingston and Montego Bay were running again on Friday, along with flights to Grand Cayman. Some Miami-Nassau flights also have resumed.
Travel is “back to normal,” said Greg Chin, communications director at the Miami-Dade Aviation Department.
That’s a big improvement from Thursday when the Miami airport saw a total of nine arrivals and seven departures canceled. Affected cities were Kingston, Montego Bay, Grand Cayman, Nassau and Tulum, Mexico. So far Friday, only two arrivals and two departures have been canceled to and from Nassau and Tulum.
MIA’s flight monitor showed that for the remainder of Friday, two arrivals from Grand Cayman and one from grenada were scheduled on-time. A flight from Kingston was delayed.
Other islands in the Caribbean were harder hit and it may take longer for them to rebound.
“This is going to be a major impact, particularly on those smaller islands in the Grenadines and in the north of Grenada,” said Simon Springett, U.N. resident coordinator in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.
Still, “major infrastructure such as airports and ports weren’t hugely damaged, and hopefully tourists won’t give up on visiting these lovely islands,” Springett said.
American Airlines said on Friday that it had restarted operations in Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada and St. Vincent. It had also resumed service in Montego Bay, Kingston and Grand Cayman. The carrier said it’s also continuing operations in Cancun and Cozumel, but has suspended service in Tulum and Merida because of airport shutdowns.
Cruise ship detours
Large cruise ships have also been affected, forced to change their itineraries.
On Friday, Royal Caribbean said it had no additional changes, but “this is a fluid situation.”
Carnival made two changes on Friday: Carnival Paradise will visit Nassau on Saturday instead of Cozumel, and Carnival Breeze didn’t visit Progreso, Mexico, as scheduled on Thursday.
Miami Herald staff writer Alex Harris contributed to this report.
Source Agencies
