I am thankful that our encounter with Hurricane Dean wasn’t worse, as I believe all Belizeans are. There are a number of things, however, that bug me. One of them is this statement that is heard over and over again in innumerable variations, “Thank God for sparing Belize.” Do people say this as an automatic reflex or because it sounds like the “right thing” to say? Think about what that statement really says. If Belize was spared a direct hit, someplace else got nailed instead. People, people just like us, live there too! So God spared Belize, but decided not to spare Mexicans, or Hondurans or Jamaicans, etc.? They are worse sinners than us, so God decided to punish them and let us off a bit more lightly? Since the majority of Belizeans claim to be Christians, don’t they know the Bible says that all men and women are sinners? Please think before you invoke the Creator’s name.
I also have to disagree with my Kremandala Show friends and colleagues. I have always been fascinated by weather phenomena and the Second Form social studies curriculum requires that students in the Caribbean learn about hurricanes and hurricane safety. One of the things I teach about hurricanes is that although we have learned so much in the last few decades, we don’t know nearly as much as some of us think we know.
The only way to develop knowledge about meteorology is to compile data and then analyze it. The first weather records weren’t gathered until 1887. That’s only 120 years ago, and the first 50 or 60 years of record keeping had to be done without all the high-tech gear that we now take for granted. This obviously resulted in a lot of difficulty getting information on these monster storms. Ships either successfully avoided a hurricane, or sank. If they survived an encounter with a hurricane on the high seas they certainly didn’t have the time to be doing research! Land observation was faced with similar problems. Early weather instruments, such as anemometers for example, blew away in high winds, leaving no record of a storm’s maximum wind speed. No sane observer hung around to record at exactly what wind speed the vanes flew off! He probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.
In the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s, we began to develop the technology to start gathering reliable information. Radar, planes that could fly inside hurricanes, computers and later, satellites have added volumes to our knowledge; however, there is so much more to learn. Every hurricane is different: there are no two that are exactly alike. They do things that we don’t expect them to do. Who was able to be 100% sure ahead of time that Dean would not be a rainmaker over the Yucatan Peninsula? Hurricanes always bring volumes of rain, don’t they? Not always, apparently. Hurricanes travel west and then hook to the north in the northern hemisphere, don’t they? Hurricane Hattie didn’t. It hooked south instead of north. So did Mitch. A late season hurricane just four or five years ago formed south of Cuba and traveled due east! It hit the Virgin Islands from the opposite direction as a Category III, did major damage to the islands’ infrastructure, and killed some people too.
The point of all this is that there is no such thing as being “too cautious” when it comes to these storms. My wife and I spent Dean in our house, about 30 yards from the sea. We looked at the charts; the steering currents and considered other personal factors – her limited mobility because of back and knee problems, as well as our pets – that we felt made this an acceptable risk for us. Then we made a decision that we were both comfortable with, a decision that we would either live with, or possibly die with! We are adults, ultimately responsible only for ourselves. If either of us were in a position of authority where our decisions would have influenced the precautions or the lack of precautions taken by thousands of other people, we would not have made the same decision. It is completely unrealistic to expect either professional meteorologists or politicians to be anything but extremely cautious.
No professional meteorologist wants to be blamed for loss of life because he/she figured that all the data showed that a hurricane would not hit a certain area, and then wound up being blindsided by a rogue storm! Who wants to have to live with the knowledge that their advice made them responsible for innumerable deaths? Politicians obviously don’t give a damn about people’s lives, but they are extremely cognizant of the fact that the relatives and friends of people who died because they weren’t cautious enough with their pronouncements, won’t vote for them the next time around. It is far better to be criticized for being too careful than to be criticized for not being careful enough.
And by the way, Cedric Flowers, my friend, how could you even think about how much an “unnecessary” evacuation costs a country in terms of dollars? What is the dollar figure an economist ascribes to one human life; two lives, two thousand lives? No, the authorities were not too cautious. We don’t know enough about hurricanes to take the chance that they will always do what we think they’re going to do and go where we think they’re going to go, and there is one hell of a price to pay for being wrong.
Okay, so now we get to the aftermath. It is an unfortunate fact of life when it comes to natural disasters that the poor suffer the most, and it already looks as though the story of the aftermath of Hurricane Dean will be no exception. Poor people live in the flimsiest houses, so they suffer the most structural damage. When the house loses its roof and some or all of its walls, personal possessions such as mattresses and clothing, children’s schoolbooks, as well as household items, are often damaged beyond repair. Since the great majority of the rural poor work as laborers in agriculture, such as the papaya industry that Dean wrecked, many are now effectively unemployed for at least five or six months.
The other thing that happens in the aftermath of natural disasters is that the ones who need the most help get the least help, and the ones who don’t need any assistance whatsoever, manage to clean up in myriads of ways. I remember Hurricane Fifi way back in 1973, a fairly low intensity storm in regards to wind, but the rain! It nailed the mountainous north coast of Honduras; the flooding rivers killed thousands and destroyed millions of dollars of property. Relief supplies poured in from abroad. Many of those supplies were confiscated by the Honduran army and promptly sold for profit. I mentioned last week that in spite of GOB’s price freeze on essential supplies prior to the hurricane’s landfall; some Belize City shops hiked their prices anyway. A Corozal resident told me that prices the day before the storm went through the roof. In her words, “People were forced to pay ridiculous prices for plywood.”
It sounds so nice ‘n proper when government people say, “Let’s put politics aside. Now is not the time for that.” These are always the same people who are bent on making sure that help is given to their voters only, the ones that they are sure about and the ones who they think that they can pull off the fence. Known Opposition supporters are frozen out as much as possible, often completely. Betcha that happens here as well. How much do you want to put up? I can make a few dollars off of your naiveté!
What has really gotten to me at this point in my life is the complete lack of conscience that too many people show, and it’s not only the wealthy who are guilty. Poor people can be some of the most materialistic people in the world. In a way it’s understandable, because those who don’t have anything but bare necessities during the best of times will take all that they can when the opportunity presents itself, but if one household manages to find ways to double or triple up on supplies, they are shorting other households, families that need just as badly as they do.
Shops are another issue. Price control is practically nonexistent in Belize, regardless of what GOB claims. The prevailing philosophy is the old “caveat emptor” – “let the buyer beware.” The used pampers in the sofa represents the extreme, but shops routinely sell expired goods, overpriced goods, you name it they do it and there is almost no chance of getting into any trouble for it. A hurricane victim from Corozal mentioned on camera last week that many shops had raised most of their prices, claiming that they had no choice because goods were “scarce”, forcing them to pay higher prices for stock. I tend to doubt whether there is any truth at all to the claim that Dean is to blame. Many merchants and traders along the chain have, as usual, seized an opportunity to profit from other people’s misery.
The politicians are the worst of the lot. How in the hell can PUP politicians demand that the local mayors and town councils not be involved in relief efforts? That’s one of the responsibilities that they were elected to carry out – assistance before, during and after a disaster. I was watching a newscast on Friday night. The Mayor of Corozal was being interviewed and I noticed that he was wearing a red shirt! I found myself wondering why? I mean everybody knows that he is UDP. Why not wear a different color shirt: yellow, green, purple, white, anything but red in order to show in a subtle way that when he says politics shouldn’t be involved he means it? Or maybe it’s that since the other side is doing it, he has to do it too?
The August 26th issue of “The Reporter” blames the residents of the Corozal District for not having enough food or water immediately after the storm, saying, “This was largely their own fault because basic hurricane preparations require people to have food and water enough for three days.” Then in the next sentence, “But then again there are a lot of families in Corozal who do not have the resources to stockpile food and water for three days.” Well, if these families don’t have the necessary resources, than how can it be their fault because they didn’t have three days food and water…duh? Unless the intimation is that it’s their fault for being poor?
Yes, people need to understand that building supplies will always take a little longer to arrive, but food and water when the Northern Highway was not damaged? That should have started arriving by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning! And if some people have to stay in shelters for a little while longer and school has to be postponed for a few weeks to make that possible, so what? Why were people told that they had to be out of some shelters by September 3rd because school had to begin on time? This was a natural disaster; remember?
We are indeed fortunate that things weren’t far worse. If Belize City had taken a direct hit, the survivors would still be counting the dead! And, the hurricane season is just entering its most active phase. The City shelters are still inadequate and insufficient in number for a major storm. If all of this doesn’t make you want to vote VIP this election -or to tell all politicians to kiss the bird and refuse to vote, what’s wrong with you!