The death toll from Hurricane Melissa has risen to 28 in Jamaica, the country's prime minister said in an update Saturday, days after the powerful hurricane made landfall as a Category 5 storm and tore through the island.

The BBC's Will Grant witnessed the devastation in the town of Black River, as he joined an aid helicopter flight over the island.

Hurricane Melissa's sustained winds of 185-mph become one of the two strongest Atlantic storms on record to make landfall, USA TODAY reported.

As flights from the Caribbean continued to land in South Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, CBS News Miami caught up with a man who was on the other side of the doors, waiting for someone special.

Westmoreland parish is believed to have the second highest number of unconfirmed deaths, after St Elizabeth to the south east. The eye of the storm hit somewhere between the two neighbouring parishes. At St Elisabeth an estimated 90% of homes have been destroyed.

Hurricane Melissa has hit southwestern Jamaica as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, causing heavy flooding and wind damage.

According to the NHC, the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, developed in 1971 by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Homer Simpson, is a rating of 1 to 5 based on a hurricane's sustained wind speed and its potential for significant loss of life and damage.

"I lost everything, all my things," he said. "We need food. We have no food."

The updates sent by friends and neighbors on WhatsApp confirmed what fisher Prince Davis already feared: Hurricane Melissa put a hole in the stern of his 50-foot (15-meter) fishing boat, and damaged the cabin and back deck.