Alligator Pond woman still sleeps on storm-ravaged verandah

Betty-Ann Brown now sleeps on the verandah of what used to be her two bedroom home in Alligator Pond, Manchester.

The 60-year-old clothes vendor’s home was destroyed when Hurricane Melissa tore through her coastal community six months ago.

A tarpaulin, wrapped around the semi-open structure, offers her some protection from the weather elements. Inside the cramped space are her bed, clothes baskets and a mountain of suitcases. Curtains line where doors used to be, and as she parts one to reveal the sea just a few feet away, Brown jokingly told The Gleaner that she now has the best view.

Despite her current living situation, her demeanour now is poles apart from the traumatic comportment she justly displayed after witnessing a wave nearly 20 feet high crashing over her home, and dragging an entire room into the sea during the monstrous Category 5 storm in October last year.

Telling The Gleaner that “life goes on”, she admits that it was very difficult for her to find hope after the home she has lived in for more than 40 years was destroyed.

“When di hurricane do dat, mi partly mad, but mi think and seh a nuh mi life gone still,” she said. “Mi pray, and like God a put strength and energy inna mi. Sometime mi cya think about it. Mi nuh have it pon mi head again ‘cause if mi continue have it pon mi head, it a guh lick mi brain and mi trouble wid bad high blood pressure,” she added.

The encouragement of community members and relatives were critical to her psychological recovery, as even though some also experienced damage from the storm, they recognised that she was the most impacted in the community.

And despite not having any doors on the verandah that she sleeps, Brown said she feels safe in her native community.

Her brother, Eural Brown, lives next door in a three-bedroom house he shares with his nephew. However, the roof was damaged during the hurricane and is still in need of repair.

Her adult daughter, who lived with her, is in the process of building a home with assistance from her father’s relatives, Brown said.

Brown told The Gleaner that she hates to “kotch a people yard”, and that she also plans to build a new one-bedroom house further away from the sea, and she has already started buying materials from money she earns from selling clothes.

“Mi buy likkle steel and mi buy wah 350 block. Mi nuh have no marl, and mi buy 11 cement. Mi nuh have nothing yet. Anything mi get just buy and put dung, and do weh mi can do,” she said.

But she said she is disappointed that despite multiple assessments being done on her home, she is yet to receive any aid from the relevant state agencies.

“[The] house still deh deh inna danger same way. Mi haffi on the verandah a sleep wid tarpaulin wrap round it. Mi deh here same way; no betta nuh come fi mi,” she said.

Councillor for the Alligator Pond division, Omar Robinson, told The Gleaner that assistance has been granted to some residents in the community whose houses were damaged in the storm, including relatives of Brown, by the office of the member of parliament.

But he said the magnitude of the damage her home sustained would require the involvement of state agencies. Nonetheless, he said work is being done through an overseas-based charity to help her.

“We are on it. I know that there is an overseas agency over Alligator Pond who would have raised some funds in the aftermath of hurricane Melissa, and she is on that list to get some benefits, but I will need to revisit her to have a first-hand [assessment] as to what she would have gotten so far,” he said.

NO HELP FOR LITTLE OCHIE

Meanwhile, Evrol ‘Blackie’ Christian, owner and operator of Little Ochie Seafood Restaurant in the community, was also disheartened by the fact that he did not get any help to get his business up and running after the storm.

Nonetheless, he told The Gleaner that despite the roughly $15 million in damage that the hurricane caused, recovery is progressing.

“The recovery process within the six months period after Melissa is an up-and-down scale, as I would say. We take up the pieces of Little Ochie, we open back few weeks after, and we building back our clientele,” he said. “We take up the pieces and we just going forward.”

Christian, whose business employs 36 people, 32 of whom are from Alligator Pond, said he will also be making some adjustments to how he reconstructs the damaged infrastructure.

“Some of the infrastructure I won’t put back up, which used to hanging over the waterfront. I don’t think I’m gonna build in the water anymore, the way how I see Melissa take those buildings and send them one mile down the beach,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com