After the floods

On the night of August 14, 1933, flood waters from intense rainfall over several days running overflowed the banks of the Sandy Gully network in Kingston and lower St Andrew sweeping away a number of houses with their occupants in them. The death toll stood at 53.

On the night of September 29, 2010, a house on a gully bank was washed into the Sandy Gully at Liguanea taking its six occupants to their deaths.

The death toll from the outer bands of Tropical Storm Nicole affecting the island has exceeded 20. This is bucking the trend of the last several storm-induced natural disasters. Since the 45 dead in Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, the numbers have been going down, even as the intensity of hurricanes has been going up. Too many of the deaths from Tropical Storm Nicole have been caused by citizens compromising their own safety.

The Bustamante 1940s 'Gully' government, with massive public works, tamed the Sandy Gully system criss-crossing the Liguanea Plains. Over the years, Montego Bay and other towns prone to flooding have been treated with flood-control measures. The country has developed an enviable disaster-preparedness and emergency-management system which, when resource allocation is taken into consideration, has to be one of the best in the world. But if citizens breach safety precautions, the best system in the world will not prevent the kind of unnecessary loss of life and property and the social-welfare assistance stemming from the passage of Nicole.

Jamaica, an island with a mountainous interior and narrow coastal plains cut by rivers and gullies and sitting in the Caribbean hurricane belt, has built one of the most dense road networks in the world. That road network has nearly as many bridges as the island has churches. Even extended rainfall without storm conditions will have serious consequences for road infrastructure.

The region is in a period of intense hurricane activity. Global warming notwithstanding, this is not the first. One such period was in the 1780s, more than two centuries ago, when there was a hurricane almost every year. Savanna-la-mar was badly affected by Tropical Storm Nicole with a tornado-type weather phenomenon destroying the Baptist church there, which was built in 1829, as well as several houses. Sav was struck by a triple whammy in 1780 when what we would now call a tsunami, a hurricane and earthquake shocks hit the town. Thanks to Clinton V. Black, we have easy access to the governor's report to the colonial office on that major disaster reproduced in part in Black's History of Jamaica.

I have modernised the account for easier reading: On Monday the 2nd, the sky all of a sudden became very overcast and an uncommon elevation of the sea immediately followed. Whilst the settlers at Savanna-la-mar were observing this extraordinary phenomenon, the sea broke suddenly in upon the town, and on its retreat swept everything away with it so as not to leave the smallest vestige of man, beast or house behind. This most dreadful catastrophe was succeeded by the most terrible hurricane that was ever felt in this country with repeated shocks of an earthquake, which has almost totally demolished every building in the parishes of Westmoreland, Hanover, part of St James and some parts of St Elizabeth.

Black added that rivers changed their courses, lakes were formed, roads blocked for miles, and crops utterly destroyed.

Natural-disaster mitigation

These natural phenomena will occur again and again. While we must do everything possible for natural-disaster mitigation, risks cannot be entirely eliminated, and nowhere is perfectly safe.

Anyone who lived through Hurricane Gilbert 22 years ago can attest to the tremendous improvement in preparation and response to natural disasters. But expectations of the government tend to have no ceiling. In a matter of hours, and even before the rains had gone away, many blocked roadways were reopened to vehicular traffic, and power and water were widely restored. In the 72 hours promised, the Harbour View ford, a major route connecting Kingston and St Thomas, was operational in some fashion.

Through the whole thing, reasonably effective communication was maintained.

Agricultural rehabilitation got off the ground within days. President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), Wayne Cummings, was on radio, not just announcing the start of the rehabilitation of the ravaged Negril beach, but recounting how one visiting American travel agent who had left nine inches of rain behind in Maryland felt that Jamaica was mounting a First-World response to the Nicole disaster.

The planes kept coming. Not a flight was cancelled at either international airport.

A media - oriented to disaster, tragedy, and what does not work - underplayed much of what did work.

As usual, the Government is finding the money - $12 billion or more of it, begged, borrowed, or sliced out of the Budget - for rehabilitation. Successive administrations have never found it possible to build up a disaster-management fund, or even to adequately finance the public agencies tasked with disaster management and post-disaster rehabilitation. The out-of-power political party can always, with great vehemence - and even greater justification - point out that the drains have not been cleaned. Over the years, the civil works which tamed the Sandy Gully decades ago have been allowed, in places, to fall into disrepair. The Harbour View Bridge fell down in Tropical Storm Gustav two years ago from lack of maintenance. We are now hearing that a large number of other bridges across the country are getting ready to fall down.

The Government does have a Road Maintenance Fund (RFM), but the RMF is running into all kinds of problems. In the first instance, the Government does not appear to be honouring its commitment to put 20 per cent of the special consumption tax on gasolene into the fund, a percentage which is to be progressively increased. Then, the use of the fund has drawn from the Opposition sharp criticism of partisan allocation.

I fully support the recommendation of the Opposition that the RMF with the Chinese loan be used for general road rehabilitation and restoration across the country in light of the damage done by Tropical Storm Nicole. I will, however, go further than any opposition party will. The RMF should be placed fully and totally in the hands of the national agencies responsible for roads. Minister Mike Henry has been behaving as if the RMF was his personal special fund to be dispersed as he sees fit.

Building upon previous neglect, the road stock of the country has been allowed by the previous long-haul, 'pothole-free' administration to fall into a state of disgraceful disrepair. Guided by broad policy directives, the technical people should be allowed to design and implement a cost-effective rehabilitation programme driven by objective needs assessments.

The prime minister is quite right. A properly designed and executed Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme can be a great boon to the weak economy, providing much-needed jobs, many of them at the unskilled level, pumping sound money into circulation, and rehabilitating and expanding critical infrastructure.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com