Orville Taylor | Stormy weather

Since Wednesday, only two of my friends who live on the south coast could be reached by phone. One of them had to leave his community to get cell phone signal. Hurricane Beryl came and some of us took her lightly as if she were a troop of unprepared security guards, rather than the military. A full assessment of the damage has yet to be done. However, videos and photos, as well as reports from correspondents, say that Beryl focused upon the south to make her wrath clout thousands between Manchester and Westmoreland.

More than 65 per cent of the country lost electricity and somewhere around 40 per cent were without running water, of course, not counting that which the hurricane blew through the houses. For the record, the loss of electricity was not precautionary, although that occurred in some cases. Some damage to the overall electrical network affected the supply islandwide.

At the time this column was being written, Portland, St Thomas, St Mary, parts of St Catherine, St Elizabeth, all of Manchester, southern Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny, were without electricity.

Any ignoramus who, because he was not majorly affected, believes that this was no big deal and that the reaction of the government was overkill; then, they should spell stupid beginning with the letter ‘R’. Since the 1980s as a student at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, I had many conversations with my friend Evan Thompson, now the country’s chief meteorologist. My position has been that meteorology, though a ‘natural hard science’; its predictability is much lower than that of sociology, if you compare the two.

So, for example, if we look at a number of socioeconomic variables, we can be accurate up to 80 per cent in predicting the life chances of individuals. For those reasons, we can make statements about the likelihood of an individual with certain antecedents, joining criminal gangs or carrying out homicidal behaviour. Given all of the variables associated with weather, even with the best of expertise, there is no perfect prediction of the path a tropical cyclone is going to take.

PREDICTED PATH

On the balance of probability, most hurricanes travel along a general predicted path. Sometimes, they vary out of the modelled route. But more often than not, they do not behave like hurricane Matthew in 2016. A very threatening category five hurricane, it dilly-dallied like a motorcyclist through traffic, avoiding a head-on collision with Jamaica, making a turn so sharp that one could almost hear the screeching of brakes, “Errrrrks!” as it suddenly shot north and continued to avoid everything that looked remotely like land.

In such circumstances, our responsibility is simply to say, “Thank you God for sparing us”, rather than, “A fool di government a tek wi fah. Dem no know wha’ dem a do!” In times of impending danger, we line up with our leaders, unless they are acting irresponsibly. We can do the politics later. For the uninformed, for someone to be guilty of negligence, there is no requirement that there be any harm resulting from the dereliction of duty. Had the government not acted the way it did, it would have been reckless even if we were ‘wreckless.’

In the aftermath of the storm, one of my longtime bredren was cussing over the fact that people had to buy and stock up goods with money that they did not have. True, but this kind of nonsense gets us killed.

Never mind what the numbers look like. Every life matters, and it really is no comfort to the relatives of those who died, that only two persons died as a result of the hurricane. As sad as it is, the unfortunate deaths of these persons go to the heart of the difference between a natural occurrence and a natural disaster.

Among the few persons from the south that I was able to contact, every single one of them expressed gratitude, first to God for having been spared, and also that they had the presence of mind to stock up.

FOOD IMPACT

While we brace for the inevitable food impact, which will be caused by the destruction of crops from the ‘breadbasket’ southern St Elizabeth, we should be rubbing out our knees in prayer and supplication that although large numbers of persons lost their homes and property, fatalities were low.

Typically, what prevents natural occurrences from becoming disasters is preparedness and decisive action by a nation’s leaders and dedicated team of public servants. Of course, there are some areas where the level of readiness was below par. For example, there were too many shelters that seemed to be inadequate. All health facilities, police and fire stations must always have backup power. There is zero excuse for any omission.

Still, declaring a curfew during the period when the hurricane was expected to be active over the country was absolutely the right decision. Declaring Jamaica a disaster zone was also a right move. Err on the side of caution!

As painful as it is that a promising youth, a father of a child he loved and was fighting for, drowned in a gully, is a reminder that there is science, research and wisdom behind the ‘stay off the street’ mandate.

This is a separate issue from where people are in a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation’. Inasmuch as we, who have a choice, can batten down and ride out the storm like George Nooks; leaving one’s modest home, fisherman’s hut or similar dwelling is a lose-lose dilemma. People in some vulnerable communities stand to lose everything to human marauders the moment they turn their back.

For some of these citizens, the rock is the hard place.

Hurricane season has another four months. So, this is by no means over. Even if we do not have another hit, we will be feeling the effects for at least another year.

Keep the stocks full.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com