This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Farah Nibbs is an assistant professor of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Headlines have been filled with talk of the after the Category 5 storm devastated communities across , and in October 2025. But to see this as a singular disaster misses the bigger picture: Melissa didn鈥檛 hit stable, resilient islands. It hit islands still rebuilding from the last hurricane.
Jamaica was still , which sideswiped the island in July 2024 as a Category 4 storm. The parish of St. Elizabeth 鈥� known as Jamaica鈥檚 breadbasket 鈥� was devastated. The country鈥檚 Rural Agriculture Development Authority estimated that .
In Cuba, the during Hurricane Oscar in October 2024, leaving 10 million people in darkness. When Melissa arrived, it struck the same fragile infrastructure that Cubans had barely begun to rebuild.
Haiti鈥檚 fragile situation before Hurricane Melissa cannot be overstated. The island nation was still reeling from years of cascading disasters 鈥� deadly hurricanes, , , and 鈥� with over half the population already even before this storm hit.
This is the new reality of the climate crisis: Disasters hitting the Caribbean are compounding and can trigger infrastructure collapse, social erosion and economic debt spirals.
The compounding disaster trap
I , with a focus on how Caribbean island systems absorb, adapt to and recover from recurring shocks, like the nations hit by Melissa are now experiencing.
It鈥檚 not just that hurricanes are more frequent; it鈥檚 that the time between major storms is now . This pulls islands into a trap that works through three self-reinforcing loops:
Infrastructure collapse: When a major hurricane hits an already weakened system, it causes . The failure of one system 鈥� such as power 鈥� cascades, taking down water pumps, communications and hospitals all at once. We saw this in and in . This kind of cascading damage is now the baseline expectation for the Caribbean.
Economic debt spiral: When countries exhaust their economic reserves on one recovery, , it becomes a .
Hurricane Ivan, which struck the region in 2004, cost Grenada over ; Maria, in 2017, of its GDP; and Dorian, in 2019, of GDP. With each storm, debt balloons, credit ratings drop and borrowing for the next disaster .
Social erosion: Each cycle weakens the human infrastructure, too. More than for the U.S. mainland in Maria鈥檚 aftermath, and after the same storm. Community networks fragment as people leave, and as each new storm reopens the wounds of the last. The very social fabric needed to manage recovery is itself being torn.
The trap is that all three of these loops reinforce each other. A country can鈥檛 rebuild infrastructure without money. It can鈥檛 generate economic activity without infrastructure. And it can鈥檛 retain the skilled workforce needed for either when people are fleeing to safer places.
Rebuilding a system of overlapping recoveries
The Caribbean is not merely recovering from disasters 鈥� it is living within a system of overlapping recoveries, meaning that its communities must begin rebuilding again before fully recovering from the last crisis.
Each new attempt at rebuilding happens on the unstable physical, social and institutional foundations left by the last disaster.
The question isn鈥檛 whether Jamaica will attempt to rebuild following Melissa. It will, somehow. The question is, what happens when the next major storm arrives before that recovery is complete? And the one after that?
Without fundamentally restructuring how we think about recovery 鈥� moving from crisis response to continuous adaptation 鈥� island nations will remain trapped in this loop.
The way forward
The compounding disaster trap persists because . They apply one-size-fits-all solutions to crises unfolding across multiple layers of society.
Breaking free requires adaptive recovery at all levels, from household to global.
At the household level: Helping amid trauma
Recovery isn鈥檛 just about repairing a damaged roof. When families experience back-to-back disasters, trauma compounds. and long-term, can help restore dignity.
Cash transfers , stimulate local economies and restore control to people whose lives have been repeatedly upended.
At community level: Mending the social fabric
Repairing the 鈥渟ocial fabric鈥� means investing in farmer cooperatives, neighborhood associations and 鈥� networks that can .
Local networks are often the only ones capable of rebuilding trust and participation.
At the infrastructure level: Breaking the cycle
The pattern of rebuilding the same vulnerable roads or power lines only to see them wash away in the next storm fails the community and the nation. There are better, proven solutions that prepare communities to weather the next storm:
- with renewable energy sources can operate independently when the main grid fails.
- such as restored mangroves and wetlands provide natural storm barriers.
- can require structures to withstand Category 4 and above winds.
At the global level: Fixing the debt trap
None of this is possible if recovery remains tied to high-interest loans. There are ways for internal financial institutions and global development lenders to allow for breathing room between disasters:
- in bond agreements can automatically pause all debt payments when disasters strike. These clauses allow governments to automatically suspend debt service payments to bondholders for up to two years when a qualifying disaster strikes. After Beryl, Grenada became the a hurricane clause with private creditors.
- involve reducing existing debt 鈥� owed to private banks, institutional investors, countries or multilateral banks 鈥� for the debtor country committing funds to climate adaptation or resilience projects.
- is money made available through , such as the Green Climate Fund and Loss and Damage Fund, or . It pays out before storms hit, not months later, so countries are ready to respond to the damage.
The , controlled by global lenders and donors, requires countries , often resulting in months of delay. 鈥淧roof鈥� is established by formal evaluations or inspections, such as by the United Nations, and aid is released only after meeting certain requirements. This process can stall recovery at the moment when aid is needed the most.
The bottom line
The Caribbean needs a system that provides support before disasters strike, with agreed-upon funding commitments and regional risk-pooling mechanisms that can avoid the delays and bureaucratic burden that slow recovery.
What鈥檚 happening in Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti today is a glimpse of what鈥檚 coming for coastal and island communities worldwide as climate change accelerates. In my view, we can either learn from the Caribbean鈥檚 experiences and redesign disaster recovery now or wait until the trap closes around everyone.
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