SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba — The rumble of large machinery, whine of chain saws and chopping of machetes echoed through communities across the northern Caribbean on Thursday as they dug out from the destruction of Hurricane Melissa and surveyed the damage left behind.

In Jamaica, government workers and residents began clearing roads in a push to reach dozens of isolated communities in the island's southeast that sustained a direct hit from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.

Stunned residents wandered about, some staring at their roofless homes and waterlogged belongings strewn around them.

"I don’t have a house now,” said Sylvester Guthrie, a resident of Lacovia in the southern parish of St. Elizabeth, as he held onto his bicycle, the only possession of value left

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