Hurricane Irma has nearly destroyed the tiny Caribbean Island of Barbuda, the island’s Prime Minister said Wednesday.
“I’m of the view that as it stands now Barbuda is barely habitable,” Gaston Brown, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda told ABS Television/Radio.
Hurricane Irma swept into the northeastern Caribbean island early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reports. The island’s population is just 1,800.
Brown estimated that 95% of the homes on the island had sustained some form of damage from the Hurricane, a level of destruction he deemed “unprecedented.” The cost of reparations, he estimated, could be as high as $150 million.
“It is just a total devastation” he said. “Barbuda right now is literally a rubble. We have to raise a significant amount of resources now to rebuild Barbuda and to restore it to normalcy.”
Although Irma only struck the island this week, another storm, Hurricane Jose, is threatening further disruption to the region. Jose is expected to develop into a hurricane this coming weekend, but its path is still unclear, according to the Weather Channel.
“If we have yet another storm coming in a matter of days we will have to make special arrangements to evacuate all of Barbuda and bring them over here [to Antigua] until we can restore some level of normalcy,” he said.