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A Texas woman stranded in Jamaica with her family described what it was like to experience the catastrophic storm while sheltering at a Sandals resort.
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Oct. 30, 2025, 7:04 p.m. ET
Alicia Rampy and four family members were celebrating her grandson’s seventh birthday at Beaches Negril, an all-inclusive Sandals resort on Jamaica’s west coast, when Hurricane Melissa scrambled their plans.
As airports closed and airlines canceled flights over the weekend, Ms. Rampy, 54, a travel adviser from Fort Worth, realized they would not be flying home on Tuesday and would instead have to hunker down at their hotel and ride out the most powerful hurricane ever to hit Jamaica.
“I understood the gravity of the situation,” she said.
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In the days leading up to landfall, Ms. Rampy said, the staff at Beaches Negril held regular town-hall-style meetings about the coming hurricane but otherwise maintained a sense of normalcy.
On Monday afternoon, the sky became increasingly overcast, and a few light showers signaled what was to come. After dinner that night, staff members encouraged guests to take food from the buffet back to their rooms just in case the staff couldn’t reach them the next day. The storm was forecast to make landfall either later that night or the next day.
As the next morning dawned and the worst winds and rains still had not arrived, some of the 130 staff members who had volunteered to ride out the storm with the guests delivered breakfast to each door, including eggs, bacon, French toast, waffles and orange juice — as the rain began to pelt sideways.
