IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy Diocese of St
By Laura Ann Phillips
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CNS) —
One year after Hurricanes Irma and Maria smashed through the Virgin Islands, people
remain jittery about the rest of the 2018 hurricane season.
“Everyone is extremely
nervous and anxious about going through another hurricane without recovering
from the previous two,” said Warren Bush, chief financial officer for the
Diocese of St Thomas.
A combination of heavy
bureaucracy, sometimes sluggish supply chains and a shortage of contractors
have slowed recovery efforts, leaving repairs to many damaged homes and public
buildings still incomplete.
Now, at the height of the
current hurricane season, “We have to stabilize buildings to prevent
additional water damage,” Bush said. “We’re very concerned about what
could be.”
On Sept. 6, 2017, Hurricane
Irma mowed through the islands and, two weeks later, Hurricane Maria devastated
whatever was left. Both hit as Category 5 storms.
“We’ve never experienced
this level of destruction,” said Bush. “And on the three islands, all
at once. There’s been a shortage of contractors, materials, so that the damage
hasn’t been addressed as quickly. You could have all the resources in the
world, but if you don’t have contractors …”
“Every contractor has
between six to 10 jobs working on,” said Andrea Shillingford, executive director
of Catholic Charities of the Virgin Islands. “We are not in normal times.”
Both Bush and Bishop Herbert
Bevard of St. Thomas credited the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Catholic
Charities and insurance companies with getting restoration of diocesan and
other properties underway.
“Schools are still severely
damaged in St. Thomas and St. Croix,” said Bush, adding that students and
teachers are using the safer structures.
Recovery in the islands tends to
be slow, he admitted, citing mitigating factors that do not exist on the U.S.
mainland when communities there are affected by storms.
“It is difficult for
someone from the States (to understand),” he said. On the mainland: “We
have more resources, more ability to obtain help from a greater region. It’s
easier for FEMA to get in, easier for us to get aid, to get through any
situations.”
Bush, who has lived in the
islands for almost 20 years, added: “It’s not necessarily a lack of
concern, rather, it’s one of access. It’s 1,500 miles away from the nearest
point of contact” from the U.S. mainland. “And, there are often
storage and distribution issues that may go unnoticed, that don’t exist in the
States.”
This also makes evacuation an
impractical option. People literally have “less ability to reach a safe
haven,” said Bush.
“It would be physically
impossible to evacuate people from these islands in one day,” said
Shillingford, originally from the island nation of Dominica. Flights are
limited, she added.
To access the Virgin Islands in a
time of disaster, mainland-based FEMA would “have to wait until the
airports and ports are repaired,” said Shillingford, “and a place (cleared)
for the helicopters to land.”
Bush said the government of the
Virgin Islands has expended “a lot of effort in the recovery process,”
noting that “about 90 percent of the utilities have been reconnected.”
Bishop Bevard said repairs to
several government buildings, such as the post offices and hospitals, appear to
be “a problem,” and “many houses still have blue tarpaulins on
their roofs, but there used to be many more.”
He said the all-important
tourism industry has been heavily affected.
“Tourism is the first and
only industry here,” he explained. “Where there were six cruise ships
a day, now we’re lucky to have six in a week. That impacts the stores, the taxi
drivers.”
Shillingford recalls one taxi
driver who “was taking care of her grandchildren. Her only form of income
has been driving that taxi. We had to help her restore her business” and
give additional help while things were slow.
“There are lots of stories
like hers,” said Shillingford, who has lived in the Virgin Islands for 11
years. “Parents can’t afford to buy school uniforms for their children.”
Homelessness is also an issue,
especially among “people whose houses were destroyed.”
“People are unemployed,”
she said. “It’s left to agencies like us to find funding.”
Catholic Charities operates five
soup kitchens on all three islands; two each on St. Croix and St. Thomas, one
on St. John. The agency serves 300-400 meals every day, up from 6,000 meals a
year, the average before Irma and Maria. A mobile service delivers meals to people
who cannot travel, like the many elderly people were abandoned after last year’s
hurricanes.
“After the storms, they had
mercy ships,” said Shillingford. “A lot of young people moved to the
mainland and left their elderly people here, and they have additional needs.
(Our) case managers go out to them.”
Bishop Bevard said the diocese
plans to build more soup kitchens and improve outreach centers and homeless
shelters on all three islands.
Shillingford said people remain shaky
when it comes to the weather.
“Any time there’s a little
rain,” said Shillingford, “people get agitated — adults, really.
Children recover quickly; they look to the adults. If the adults pretend, the
children feel it’s OK. Especially now, this week, people are kind of nervous,”
she said as the winds of Tropical Storm Isaac fanned the islands.
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