Holness cautions Jamaicans rushing to replace zinc roofs with concrete slab

As Jamaicans prepare to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is urging caution regarding replacing zinc roofs with concrete slab roofs, under the assumption that they are more disaster resistant.

“I know that there are many Jamaicans who will be saying no more zinc for me, I’m going totally slab. Before you think about slabbing your roof, make sure that the structures can support it,” Holness said at a press conference yesterday.

The Prime Minister instructed the Minister of Local Government to initiate a campaign to inform the public of the engineering requirements for putting on slab roofs, stating that "you don’t want to replace one disaster with another”.

Although slab roofs resist extremely high winds, they raise other safety issues. A collapsed slab roof, which can occur during earthquakes, is deadly.

Hurricane Melissa, which tore through Jamaica on October 28, damaged nearly 156,000 homes, 24,000 of which were total losses. The category five storm impacted approximately 900,000 people, and caused an estimated US$8.8 billion in physical damage.

Holness announced the Government's intention to use "pre-built containerised modular solutions" as it seeks to rapidly rebuild the housing stock destroyed by the hurricane.

Holness said that the National Housing Trust is to purchase 5,000 of these container homes in the initial stage, some of which it will sell to individuals, while some are to be used to build housing schemes.

He says a portion will be allocated for free distribution through the Government's social housing programme. The Central Government will also be purchasing some of these structures to be used in the social housing programme.

- Sashana Small

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