St. John DEO assessing damage

IN excess of 40 houses were damaged in the parish of St. John on Friday morning dur-ing the passage of Hurricane Elsa, including three which were destroyed.

That’s according to Chairperson of the St. John District Emergency Organisation (DEO), John Haynes. He was speaking to The Barbados Advocate, while out yesterday afternoon, distributing tarpaulins to those in need and assessing damage in areas such  as Wilson Hill and Sherbourne, St. John. Haynes explained that most of the damage was in relation to roofs, and noted that the tarpaulin would help to protect the houses from the elements, especially in instances where they were still occupied.

He said that with the power outage in the parish, they were still doing damage assessment yesterday, as there was difficulty getting information about the damage sustained because they could not charge the two-way radios and telephone access was also compromised. Haynes said that he had spoken with the officer-in-charge of the polyclinic at the David Thompson Health and Social Services Complex, and was given permission to move the DEO’s emergency operations centre (EOC) there until power is restored.

“The polyclinic has a generator, and so we will move our EOC from over by the church [St. John Parish Church], so that we would be able to use our laptops to input the data we have collected and recharge the radios. In the meantime, we are continuing to do our assessments, so that we can get more details to send into the Department of Emergency Management and by extension the Statistical Department, which has responsibility for damage assessment. We have recorded our information manually, but once the EOC is up and running, we will input it in our database and forward the information via e-mail to those agencies,” he said.

The St. John DEO chair said that in addition to distributing supplies, the DEO was quite active over the last few days helping to clear roads where trees had fallen. He said among the areas where trees were uprooted are Kendal, which was blocking a bus route, and just outside Codrington College, two mahogany trees were uprooted.  

“So we are multitasking. Right now I would not say that we are overwhelmed, but a lot of these things take time. In terms of the trees, we have to get chainsaws and the right type of chainsaws, and then the removal of pieces out of the road is critical. The other thing is there are a lot of palings down, but those are not priority for us, our priority is to make sure that we distribute the tarpaulin to cover the structures until further assistance can come,” he said.

His comments came as he stated that they were also checking up on the houses that were affected during the freak storm. He said some of those persons are still awaiting assistance, and at least one house in Glenburnie, which was damaged then, sustained further damage on Friday.

As the country continues to grapple with the impacts of Elsa, he is urging all Barbadians to stay on high alert. Haynes maintained that Barbadians must disabuse their minds of the notion that the old mariners’ rhyme about the hurricane season is still relevant. He is therefore stressing the importance of preparedness.

“We’ve just got out of June, which we used to have the slogan ‘June too soon’, ‘July stand by’ and you see what has happened already. Therefore, going forward we can’t be sure that we will not have a lot of systems coming off the African coast like what we are experiencing now. Year after year we have been saying what you should do to prepare, but persons have not been adhering, and we can only appeal to them to do what is necessary,” he said. (JRT)