Help coming for St Bess freak storm victims

WESTERN BUREAU:

ORNELLA LEWIS, parish disaster coordinator for St Elizabeth, says evaluations are now taking place with a view of providing assistance to residents whose homes were damaged during the passage of Saturday’s freak storm.

According to Lewis, a combined team from the Disaster Unit at the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security carried out an initial assessment of the damage caused by the freak storm.

Lewis, in a Gleaner interview on Tuesday, said those assessments were done on Monday and that the collection of relevant data was done for those affected to access grants to assist with repairs.

“We had about five homes that were damaged in the Raheen Housing (area), located in the Union area of the Balaclava division. There, persons lost their roofs and they have tried to do basic remedial repairs, so that they can continue to live in them,” Lewis said.

“Some have used building blocks to temporarily hold their roof in place,” she said.

The parish disaster coordinator also noted that several other houses and grocery shops, including the Aberdeen Post Office, have suffered damage to their roofing.

“In the vicinity of Aberdeen High School, there was a house which is located pretty much in the Aberdeen Square that was affected; there with the partial removal of its roof. Also in the Thornton district, there was minor damage to a house, where several windows were shattered,” she added.

The freak storm, which hit the parish at approximately 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 2, tore through two buildings and damaged sections of the Aberdeen High School’s fencing.

Anthony Foster, chairman of the school board, told The Gleaner earlier this week that about one-third of the roof damage is from two classrooms, a building that houses the principal’s office and the library.

“A building that people know as the principal’s cottage, the entire roof of that building is destroyed; and there are several fallen trees, mostly coconut trees, across the school grounds,” Foster said on Sunday.

“A door to one of the classrooms was broken into two pieces, and this was a door that was locked. I figure that because part of the roof was blown off, the breeze would have taken that door from the inside, causing it to break the way it broke,” Foster added.

St Elizabeth, over the years, has had several bouts of freak storms that have affected businesses, residents and agricultural production.

In August 2010, a freak storm, which started sometime after three o’clock in the afternoon, destroyed seven houses, leaving more than 50 people without shelter. That weather system had also left several roads in the Logwood community blocked with debris.

And in 2015, a freak storm in the Carisbrook community, near Maggotty, damaged two houses, destroyed crops, and downed several light poles. That incident also took place in the afternoon, during a heavy downpour of rain.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com