牙买加的咖啡产业，需要几年时间才能完全从飓风的袭击中恢复过来。
2004有4个飓风侵袭牙买加,导致蓝山豆难求,没想到又有飓风卷向牙买加了。
2005年7月初来袭的飓风叫做：丹尼斯Dennis,造成牙买加巨大损失！尤其蓝山产区;处理场的部份建筑物遭大水冲垮、储存生豆的区域也遭淹没、主要办公区也惨被泥沙淤积淹盖、损失不少库存的蓝山生豆,估计,本区的损失高达7、8千万美元！日晒场跟去果皮肉场也被山上冲下来的洪水淹没、很多处理机械设备都需大修,才能再度启用.
在雪松谷以及 Penlyne Castle, Mt. Vernon, Somerset等周边地区,多数农户正准备2005最新产季的采收处理等事项,但却发生严重的【飓风落果事件】,不少成熟待采的红樱桃果,都在飓风侵袭下,惨遭吹落,而豪雨,也造成本区栽种地的土层滑动,这些咖啡农才刚从 Ivan飓风稍事恢复,没想到又面临丹尼斯的严重打击.
去年的灾难,已造成蓝山豆全面缺货(不管是哪个庄园或哪个合作社,都相当缺货),今年这情况,势必影响到2005-2006的新豆供应……
Hurricane Dennis Churns Toward Jamaica
LES CAYES, Haiti – Hurricane Dennis flooded roads in Haiti and threatened a direct hit on Jamaica, pushing oil prices sharply higher Wednesday and becoming the second storm to threaten petroleum output in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hurricane warnings were posted for the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Haiti and eastern Cuba, including the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where some 520 terror suspects are detained. Forecasters also warned Dennis was on track for the Alabama-Florida coastline.
Dennis came right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and hindered oil production and refining. Traders said that uncertainty over both storms helped to push oil prices to new highs. Crude oil for August delivery settled at $61.28 a barrel and establish a new record on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The previous closing high was $60.54 set June 27.
Packing sustained winds near 85 mph, the fourth storm of the Atlantic season – and its first hurricane – could dump up to 15 inches of rain over mountains in its path, including Jamaica’s coffee-producing Blue Mountains, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Last year three hurricanes – Frances, Ivan and Jeanne – tore through the Caribbean with a collective ferocity not seen in many years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.
Inside the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the military prepared audio tapes in at least eight languages warning that a storm was coming and heavy steel shutters would be closed on some cell windows, said Col. Mike Bumgarner.
Military officials had no immediate plans to evacuate troops or detainees at Camp Delta, which is about 150 yards from the ocean but was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph, according to Navy Cmdr. Anne Reese, supervisor of camp maintenance and construction.
Power lines could be knocked down and roofs could be damaged on some older, wooden buildings, Reese said.
“It will be bad, but it’s not going to be very destructive,” she said.
Bumgarner said the military had a contingency plan to move the prisoners if conditions became serious.
Dennis grew into a Category 1 hurricane Wednesday afternoon and threatened to hit Jamaica as a Category 2 with winds above 96 mph, the Hurricane Center said.
Haiti, also in the storm’s projected path, took the deadliest hit of last year’s hurricane season when Jeanne, at the time a tropical storm, triggered flooding and mudslides: 1,500 people were killed, 900 missing and presumed dead and 200,000 left homeless. Torrential rains burst river banks and irrigation canals and unleashed mudslides that destroyed thousands of acres of fertile land in Haiti.
Poverty-stricken Haitians said there was little they could do about the warnings this time.
“It’s not only that we don’t have money to prepare, we don’t have money either to eat. We are willing to stay here and let whatever happens happen,” said Martine Louis-Pierre, a 43-year-old mother of three.
At 2 a.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 160 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, moving west-northwest near 15 mph, the Hurricane Center said.
Private forecaster AccuWeather has the storm tracking into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with landfall Friday or Saturday on the Florida-Alabama border as a strong Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane, with winds from 96 mph to 130 mph.
Radio stations in Haiti and Jamaica warned people to stay away from rivers that could overflow their banks. Some southern roads in Haiti, which is dangerously deforested, already were blocked by flooding Wednesday.
In southern Les Cayes, Jose Luis Paez, assistant chief of operations for U.N. civilian police, said 600 civilian police were trying to evacuate people from low-lying areas, but some refused to leave.
Jasmine Romelus, a 22-year-old student, was among them. “Hurricane?” she asked. “They always say there’s going to be a hurricane and it never comes.”
Six small communities in the eastern Jamaica parish of St. Thomas were also cut off by flood waters. Emergency officials urged coastal residents – a large percentage of the population of 2.6 million – to move inland and ordered schools closed until Friday so they could be used as shelters. Kingston’s airport was also closed.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister P.J. Patterson abandoned the final day of the annual Caribbean summit in St. Lucia, to rush home. Before leaving, he called on Jamaicans to prepare “to protect those who are infirm, the elderly and the young.”