Remembering Hurricane Ivan… 20 years on

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Jamaica suffered losses of $35.9 billion due to Hurricane Ivan, according to a report by ECLAC.

SEPTEMBER 10 brings back haunting memories for some Jamaicans. On that day 20 years ago, Hurricane Ivan struck with Category 4 winds, rains and storm surges, leaving a trail of destruction in some sections of the island and thousands without shelter, electricity and running water for weeks.

But crises teach valuable lessons and, two decades later, what resonates most with Jamaicans from Ivan is the importance of having an effective and established response system to facilitate smooth recovery from such natural disasters.

Reflecting on her experience as director general of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in 2004, Dr Barbara Carby highlighted some of the immediate preparatory measures taken by the Government ahead of the hurricane.

She said that, as part of general preparedness, the National Emergency Operation Centre along with the Parish Emergency Operation Centres and the Community Disaster Management teams were immediately activated.

“At that time, we also had emergency operations centres in key ministries and key agencies. It wasn’t just the Government agencies that would have been activated and in contact with OPDPEM as we had development partners, we had the utilities, some countries with which we had various projects and agreements, so there would have been constant communication to ensure that everybody knew what was going on and that everybody was up and running,” she said.

Dr Carby noted that she had experienced other hurricanes while working at ODPEM but Hurricane Ivan was the most severe weather system that affected Jamaica during her tenure as director general.

“I had been through Gilbert at ODPEM. I had in fact just started at ODPEM when Gilbert came, but it is totally different being a staff member from being in charge, you know? When you are heading the organisation, you take a lot of responsibility because it’s stressful,” she told Jamaica Observer Online.

Some 369,685 people were directly affected by Hurricane Ivan, according to a report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Many of those impacted were in the direct path of the hurricane in Clarendon, St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Kingston and St Andrew and Manchester.

Seventeen people lost their lives as a direct result of the hurricane — eight from Kingston and St, Andrew, six from Portland Cottage in Clarendon, two from St Catherine, and one from Manchester. According to the report, the deaths occurred due to fallen trees, collapsed roofs, mudslides or individuals being swept away by floodwaters.

The report said there were another 14 deaths indirectly related to the hurricane — nine of those deaths occurred in Kingston and St Andrew, two each were reported from St Elizabeth and St Ann, and one from Hanover.

Recounting the moments before the hurricane, Dr Carby said the Government tried to get people to evacuate vulnerable communities, an order which was ignored by many resulting in the loss of lives.

Then Prime Minister PJ Patterson had declared a state of emergency and pleaded with half a million people living in vulnerable areas to leave their homes as Ivan powered towards Jamaica.

“Residents living near coastal areas must evacuate before it’s too late,” Patterson said in an address to the nation. “I cannot stress too strongly that Ivan is a dangerous hurricane. What we’re experiencing now is only the beginning.”

The former prime minister’s call was ignored by many. For Dr Carby, that was the hardest pill to swallow.

“It’s always very disturbing to see damage or loss of life that could have been prevented had they followed instructions. I always had a hard time dealing with that — that people died because they did not follow our instructions,” she said.

She, however, described the groundwork as good, commending the community disaster-response teams for their mobilisation efforts and praising the local, regional and international partners who provided support during the recovery.

“The community disaster response teams did very well because they were very important in terms of getting the warnings out on the ground because, remember, in those days you didn’t have WhatsApp… so the community teams were very, very important,” Dr Carby said.

The former ODPEM director general explained that a key lesson coming out of Hurricane Ivan was the value of decentralising the response system to improve the reach of recovery efforts.

“One of the things I think worked very well, not only for Ivan but for other incidents which we had, was that the Ministry of Finance gave ODPEM a certain level of expenditure which they could use without having to come back to get permission,” Dr Carby said.

While she could not recall the limit on this provision, she noted that it was very effective in providing immediate relief.

“We didn’t have to wait for a lot of paperwork to be done and ODPEM did the same thing with the parishes so parish disaster committees had the approval to spend to a certain amount in emergency expenditure to be able to provide relief supplies immediately after or immediately before, depending on what the need was,” she continued.

“By building capacity at the parish level and building capacity at the community level, the response was actually able to be effective much more quickly,” Dr Carby said.

Looking back, the former ODPEM boss described the country’s response efforts as reasonable despite gaps, including the inability to preposition supplies at all the shelters and the delay in access to some communities because roads were blocked.

She, however, commended the telephone communication, mainly landlines at the time, which she said held up very well.

“We relied mainly on the telephone network as the radio coverage was very limited… Fortunately, Cable and Wireless as it was, after [Hurricane] Gilbert had actually buried a lot of their lines so the landline system held up very well [in Hurricane Ivan]… so we were able to actually use telephone communication,” Dr Carby explained.

She added that another key lesson was the value of partnership as “everybody pulled together to help with the response”.

Furthermore, coming out of Ivan, Dr Carby noted that the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) was set up which former Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies was part of.

CCRIF is a not-for-profit organisation that provides short-term financial assistance to Caribbean governments after natural disasters. Its goal is to limit the financial impact of catastrophic events like hurricanes, earthquakes, and heavy rainfall by offering parametric insurance.

She was keen to note that while managing Jamaica’s recovery from Hurricane Ivan, then Pime Minister Patterson was also chairman of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) at the time.

“Now that year, Grenada had been very badly hit… So even while we were responding in Jamaica, he [Patterson] and I, and a government delegation went to Grenada to see how we could assist them there and part of that assistance was that ODPEM lent them a staff member to help them with the emergency management activities,” Dr Carby recounted.

While ODPEM had managed the emergency response in the aftermath of the hurricane, days later an Office of National Reconstruction (ONR) was set up by Patterson to co-ordinate the efforts of government, non-government and civil society in the reconstruction of the country.

Then Director of Elections Danville Walker was named by Patterson to head that office.

“I knew a great grasp of the entire country because of the electoral system and running the elections. Every parish and constituency was very familiar to me, so the idea of first assessing the impact of the hurricane came natural and easy for me and the team,” Walker told Observer Online.

The former ONR head explained that in coordinating the recovery efforts, his team conducted several assessments which were followed by the prioritisation of what needed to be fixed to get back to normality.

For the ONR, the repair of schools which had been badly damaged by the hurricane was a key element.

“I think we did very well. We raised about $6 billion if I can recall for the hurricane interventional recovery, repaired over 1,000 schools, a number of police stations. We sought to impact, to assist with areas that would impact the community. We built about 242 homes, houses in Portland Cottage, Old Harbour Bay and in Westmoreland, and countless other projects that were brought to our attention as in need, even up to Hope Gardens, the restoration of Hope Gardens as a green space,” Walker said.

In particular, he noted that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programme, which was focused on the repair of schools, at the end of its intervention highlighted that ONR administered the funds “so efficiently” that they were able to fix an additional 300 schools.

“We took real pride in the level of work we did… I thought we did pretty well. At the end of it we had no scandals,” he recalled.

Despite initial plans for a six-month tenure, Walker said he remained at ONR for about a year to ensure comprehensive recovery before returning to the electoral office. Reflecting on lessons learned, he said Hurricane Ivan highlighted the need for dedicated funds to enable swift responses to natural disasters.

“We need to be able to respond. We can’t just wait for donations from people around the world. You have to be able to respond and therefore you have to have funding that you can draw on immediately without disrupting the rest of the national budget. Those are priorities too, and that is what I believe is a lesson that we learned or should have learnt; I believe we did learn because they established a fund, a mechanism to achieve that,” he explained.

According to the ECLAC report, the country suffered losses of $35.9 billion including $806.9 million in damage to the education and culture sector; $718.2 million in damage to the health sector; $8.55 billion in damage to the agriculture and livestock sector; $1.59 billion in damage to the tourism sector; and $3.19 billion in damage to the road transport sector.

In total, Ivan lasted for 22.5 days, had a track that was 5,600 nautical miles long and reached Category 5 status three times during its life span, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

Jamaica Observer Online, in association with a number of partners, has produced its 2024 Hurricane Season Guide. This is one of the many stories in the supplement which can be accessed at https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2024/08/01/hurricane-season-guide-2024/

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