The courthouse, the library, schools, the downtown shopping district and almost everybody’s roof — all gone, wiped out by the most powerful hurricane to ever hit Jamaica.
Practically no building in Black River, along the country’s southern coast, remains intact. In a country where dozens of towns were ravaged by the hurricane, the town’s destruction has become emblematic of the post-storm misery Jamaicans must now grapple with.
The Reverend Thomas Ngigi, a Kenyan priest posted to St Theresa’s parish in Black River, sat in the shade in what little was left of the church, counting his blessings.
Hurricane Melissa tore the roof off, demolishing all the pews and most everything else inside, but leaving the crucifix, tabernacle — the locked decorative box where the Holy Eucharist is kept — and a revered statue of the church’s patron saint intact. With the rectory in shambles and his diabetes medications lost, he laid his clothes and religious books out in the sun to dry.
St Theresa’s, a waterfront church that had been part of a majestic promenade of historic buildings, is surrounded by ruins.
“At night, people come by and ask if they can stay here,” Father Ngigi said. “I say the whole place is blown apart.”
A local homeless man with the words “security guard” written by hand on the back of his T-shirt keeps the priest company. The church’s groundskeeper, who said he was trapped in the rubble of another building on the property and dug himself out, goes out on his bicycle to look for food to bring back.
The hurricane tore the roof off the church, demolishing almost everything inside, but leaving the crucifix, tabernacle and a statue of their patron saint intact.
Hurricane Melissa pushed into Jamaica as a Category 5 storm last week, killing at least 32 people and destroying an untold number of buildings and homes. At least one of those killed washed up on the shores of Black River and has yet to be identified.
Much of the country remains without electricity, as the authorities struggle to clear roads to reach stranded communities.
Black River, a town of about 5,000 people and the capital of St Elizabeth Parish, in southwest Jamaica, was one of the hardest hit places.
Home to a shrimp and freshwater fishery, Black River boasted of having a house that got electricity in 1893, even before such luxuries arrived in much of the US. But that waterfront house on High Street, the Waterloo guesthouse in its most recent incarnation, just a short walk from St Theresa’s, was also obliterated by the massive storm.
The local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, however, fared surprisingly well.
Even buildings that did not lose their roofs are swamped with mud. Everyone in town is cleaning up.
After days of desperation that saw stores looted, Black River is at work trying to pick up the pieces. The power is out, phones are down, people are running out food, but aid distribution has begun and there’s a palpable sense of a place trying to come back from an extraordinary calamity.
Firefighters carried buckets of mud out of the first floor of the firehouse, which was deluged by 16 feet of water.
“To clean this? This definitely is not a one-day operation,” said Kimar Brooks, the fire superintendent. “Ninety per cent of the citizens are displaced.”
Many of the police, firefighters, nurses and doctors in town have yet to go home and check on their houses, though they assume that nothing
remains.
New York Times News Service