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Give me Portia, storm or calm
Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Sunday | August 26, 2007
Dawn Ritch, Columnist
There is no doubt that Jamaica is a blessed island. Last weekend, we were spared a direct hit by Category Four Hurricane Dean. And we haven't had a major earthquake for a century. That is well and truly very lucky.
Just the thought of a hurricane puts me into a daze. Terror has no greater name than earthquake or hurricane.
On the day of anticipated landfall, the Prime Minister of the country was quoted on the United States television network CNN, as saying, "we must all bend down together." I know this because someone called me from Atlanta. At first I couldn't understand a word she was saying, because I had no power, no water, only telephone. Eventually I got the drift and struggled back to my chair. I felt myself foolishly feeling around for seat belts, and realised there were none.
That afternoon, a friend in Jamaica, nudged me by telephone too. She told me to listen to the radio. I had batteries so I flung them in, and tuned to RJR. My friend was on Power 106. She thought she had a pal. But I was glad when the telephone died the next day. That was unaccountable bliss.
The fear I acquired of hurricanes is relatively recent. But matters were certainly not helped the night before the event. I still had power and the television news was on. There was Opposition Leader Bruce Golding, with his hair blowing in the wind, standing on the Palisadoes strip. He was on camera telling us that it would be cut up into little "islands". He said the repairs weren't done properly since the last hurricane impact in 2004. Well, I don't think anybody needed to know that right then.
The radio was kept on. For the entire weekend the Jamaica Labour Party ran advertisements with Bruce Golding saying he was in contact with the prime minister. Big deal to him, small comfort to me. His ads were as annoying as the mosquitos.
The day before the hurricane, I heard Mrs. Simpson Miller on the radio. Among other things, she was asking people in low-lying areas to evacuate, and telling them where to go for shelter. That was information everybody needed to know at the time. Over the weekend, I heard her voice more on radio than I've ever heard it before. It seemed like everybody, even the Jamaica Observer reporters, got an exclusive interview with the prime minister.
'Dean' was the third most intense hurricane since records began in 1850. The Jamaica Observer printed a photograph of the Prime Minister in a disaster meeting. She had three good-looking men on her left, and three good-looking men on her right. That's how I'd always pictured it in my imagination. Mrs. Simpson Miller was in command.
Bruce Golding was oblivious to all that. He just kept on talking about how he'd been chatting with the police commissioner as well as the Prime Minister, and told them that a declaration of a state of emergency was unnecessary. But the prime minister told the country on radio that she would lift the state of emergency only when the majority of people had electricity again, and then go to the general election.
The aftermath
The day after the passage of 'Dean', I couldn't move an inch. The phone was dead. I was in slack-jawed heaven all day long.
Tuesday now, was a different kettle of fish. When I heard there was a state of emergency, I was mightily relieved, because I had a lot to do out on the road. I was able to clean up my business place downtown while the doors and windows were wide open. I slept at home with the doors and windows open. First time in decades; best sleep in decades.
There's nothing I love more than a padlock and a safe seat, except a good strong wall to hide behind. At one point, I thought the hurricane had struck. The wind wouldn't stop howling, the rain flew horizontally until 20 feet away from me was like a solid sheet of white zinc. Trees bent in every direction and snapped. Branches wrapped themselves right around each other.
Even people in Port Royal say they'll evacuate next time, and they are the hardiest people I know. One of them told me that the sea came up from both sides and met in the middle. These are not people given to exaggeration. The sewers backed up in some people's homes; not even a mattress could be saved.
This really isn't the time to be politicking no one seems to mind. Maybe they're in a daze too. But soon, we will all calm down, and I don't think that on reflection, the business-as-usual politics we endured from the Opposition will sit well. They even stuffed our letter boxes with promotional flyers during the hurricane. Politicians must not give the impression of thinking only about their votes, when other people are thinking about their great and personal losses.
I was alarmed, therefore, to hear some talk-show hosts incandescent with rage when the general election was postponed. Even Bruce Golding kept trying to set the new date. He tried it before and failed, but that has not dissuaded him from trying again and failing again.
Palisadoes strip prediction
The Palisadoes strip did not break up into islands, as he had predicted. I don't know who Golding thinks put the Opposition Leader in charge of the country, but it can only be his lawyers. This is a most deluded presumption, and under the circumstances of a national disaster, quite irrelevant.
I'm glad Desmond McKenzie, mayor of Kingston, spent little or no time on radio. The sound of him stammering into the microphone was most unsettling. On balance, therefore, the country is indeed most fortunate that an alarmist was not prime minister last weekend.
Mrs. Simpson Miller did an impressive job to rave reviews internationally and locally, except among the well-known tribalists. Before the rain had even stopped, I heard her again on radio, confirming international relief aid from Brazil, Venezuela, Spain and the U.S. I'd rather go through a disaster with her anytime than any one of those 'Frighten Fridays' now seeking representational office.
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