BERYL’S BATTERING
LAST TUESDAY, a woman who lived near a gully bank community asked me if I thought her house, a board structure with poorly attached zinc roofing, would be able to survive Hurricane Beryl. I lied to her and told her yes but only if she placed some blocks at strategic spots on the roof.
According to her, she was seeking my advice because she heard me say that I had lived through many hurricanes. Last Thursday, the day I wrote this column, I saw her trying to put back what was left of her humble but badly damaged place of abode. No roof and some rafters missing. She didn’t see me, and I was too much of a coward to face her. To make matters worse, at no time during the passage of the storm did I experience hurricane force winds at the St Andrew spot where I live. Quite strange.
Hurricane Beryl, that awful lady with the innocent name, has presented huge numbers of people in this country many moments of worry and a huge bill of damage. We cannot go forward if we don’t start the rebuilding now. I can’t afford to feel guilty because I suffered no damage to limb or property.
In 2004, as Hurricane Ivan was on the way to Jamaica, without invitation, many people I spoke with had adopted the mantra, ‘Nuh hurricane nah come’. It was different this time around. A water bottling/retail outlet on Red Hills Road probably sold more water last Tuesday than it did in the last 12 months. Expensive cars were parked on both sides of the road, and the lines to the door were unusually long.
A pair of D-size batteries were selling for $1,400, and the candles were sold out.
IVAN ON STEROIDS
And as usual, the poorest among us looked for food, the most immediate need. It occurred to me that Beryl was Ivan on steroids. And by its torrid passage in the Eastern Caribbean, it indicated a hunger to ape much of the monster Hurricane Gilbert.
Gilbert took my roof in its September 1988 passage. I watched Ivan (2004) from the safety of a heavily grilled verandah and slab-roof house. In 2007, I watched Dean from the same place. At all times I was well aware that even as I was safe, many others had to face those furies on their own as their houses and farms were ripped up.
We had a hurricane named Allen in 1980. After its passage, I fully understood what storm surge meant while visiting Annotto Bay with my Fortis friend David Wedderburn. While walking on a beach, I noticed that light poles had been erected and it caused me puzzlement. I asked someone about the poles.
“Why are there light poles on this nice, sandy beach?”
The young man laughed. “A di street yu a walk pon.”
Farther down the road, there was a huge boulder taller than a fully grown man. “It just roll out a di sea,” my unofficial guide said. Many poor settlements exist on the coastlines of Jamaica, and even though the total damage suffered by Jamaica due to Beryl will take some time to gather, we know that those settlements have suffered. And that includes old people and children.
THINGS LEARNT FROM GILBERT
Hurricane Gilbert, which struck Jamaica in 1988, stripped paint from a section of a wall I saw. It denuded Jamaica of much of its greenery. It devastated small farmers and the agricultural sector.
For a few months after, many people living on hillsides had a fish-eye view of their surroundings. One part of the huge problem facing the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) was getting the pole network back up and running as just about all poles had been ripped apart at the base. Close to 100 per cent of the poles and the lines were flat on the ground. At the Palisadoes airport, an airplane was stuck in a huge tree, compliments of the fury of Gilbert, which had gusts of 200 miles per hour.
At that time, the prime minister was Eddie Seaga, and his management of the crisis was a master class in political leadership. Remember now, we were still in the grip of the Cold War (1947 - 1991).
Eddie Seaga was President Reagan’s ally in the great ideological tension, and Seaga needed to cash in some chips. Enter Florida Power and Light, the largest power utility in the state.
With almost the entire JPS distribution system down but not out, by Christmas that year, light and power were restored. Of interest, by February of 1989, Seaga was voted out.
I fool myself in the belief that the more storms I see the more prepared I am. To a large extent that is true, but psychologically, I am never comfortable. Locked in a house, battened down while hell and powderhouse is smashing, breaking and bending everything in the path of the storm’s fury, is never a recipe for perfect peace.
At this time, the PM knows that until the final Beryl bill is tallied, he, too, will be in an uncomfortable psychological corner. On top of which, he has his pressing political concerns: an economy making all the right moves in the macro phase while the man at street level exists in a parallel universe with a troubling disconnect.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND BERYL
Just about every scientist of note will point to Beryl, the early formation of the storm, and the likelihood that many more will certainly come this season and connect it with climate change.
I am not so sure that the man and woman at street level are unduly concerned with climate change. Sounds hackneyed, but if a man’s basic needs are in a bad place, he really doesn’t care about climate change. And doesn’t want to hear about it.
Many poor householders are still burning their garbage. Can releasing carbon into the air be connected to the increased fury of hurricanes and the increase in the season? How best can that be conveyed?
It is a hard sell to make when that householder says, “Garbage nuh collect fi six weeks now.”
In the United States, one political party, the GOP, has totally denied climate change. That is a big, big problem.