Barbara Gloudon

Last Friday, in the hours between mid-morning and early afternoon, I toured sections of the Corporate Area for RJR's Hotline programme to get a glimpse of how people were preparing for Hurricane Ivan. In the vicinity of the Kingston Waterfront, we came across three overseas media teams - one each from the BBC, CNN and a Florida local TV station.
All had flown in to cover Hurricane Ivan. We ended up interviewing each other.

It seems to me that they were here not just to convey to their audience the force of the wind or to record for posterity the behaviour of what was forecast to be one of the most vicious storms in years, but to get a closer look at the peculiar creatures called Jamaicans.

They know us through the music. They've seen us in action in sports. They've heard our names linked to ugly events - riots and murder statistics. They came this time to see how we would behave in a storm. From some of the questions which I was asked, it was evident that there were expectations that we could provide a story worthy of the investment of flying in teams of reporters, cameramen and production personnel.

A Florida-based reporter wanted to know if, at the time we were speaking (sometime before noon), Jamaicans were afraid we would lose most of our houses like Grenada did.
My reply was that, while we would be sure to suffer much damage, experience had shown that Jamaican buildings tended to be more heavily reinforced than their counterparts elsewhere. We build with much steel and concrete, hence I believed that we were not likely to see the almost total wipe-out like in Florida, for instance. Other questions were asked, all pointing to a mindset that something spectacular was likely to happen here, motivated not so much by the elements of Nature, but by the rambunctious nature of the people.

We left the visitors in search of the great Jamaican story and continued the tour, through the wind and rain, in the course of which we visited two police stations - the Area Four Headquarters which has oversight for a significant portion of what we like to call "the inner city" and Duhaney Park, St Andrew, where the local police station has earned the reputation of sustaining good relations with the community.

The storm had not yet struck, but there were already indications that looting was going to be a problem. So said, so done. Later that night, by time the winds began to blow, when decent citizens were battened down, holding their breaths and praying for strength to withstand the wrath of Ivan, the "pestilence that walketh by night", aka the looters, came out of the darkness to begin their dirty work, in rural and urban areas alike.

These parasitic invaders were not poor folk lacking a bread and shelter. These were serious criminals, heavily armed, prepared to do battle in their quest for what was not theirs. (Incidentally, while we like to protest police brutality, who has protested that several cops were shot and injured during the storm?).

The news soon passed quickly around the Jamaican communities abroad that some of us have lost our humanity, and that includes the price gougers, the whiners and complainers who are behaving as if nothing has happened.
The status quo must be restored for them immediately and to hell with the rest.

A Toronto-based friend phoned to ask an angry question: "When did the looters decide that Jamaica belonged to them and them alone?" Many persons here said that they expected no different, but we all acknowledge that we can't go on so. How the change will come, we do not know. Even if looting in the wake of disaster is not unique to Jamaica (it is a serious problem in storm-torn Grenada), it would have been of some comfort to know that even for once, we could prove the exception to the rule.

It has been popular to excuse away anti-social behaviour with talk of poverty, to carry the line that if people had jobs, they would not be inclined to steal. If that is so, let's see how many of the armed thugs who were out in the wind and the rain last weekend preying on other people, would be willing to earn an honest living clearing up fallen trees and repairing damaged roofs and structures. Maybe it is naive to expect too much of gunmen. As far as I know, no gun has ever replaced a shingle or a sheet of zinc.

Before we leave the matter of the looters, we have a word for the women who descended to criminal behaviour during the storm. What lessons does a thieving mother teach her children when she comes home with another woman's bedspread, pots and pans, clothing? Why didn't the police make arrests on Sunday afternoon when the women thieves were plundering Caribbean Terrace?

Storm Surge: It had to be the falling barometric pressure which accounted for the leader of the opposition's knee-jerk reaction to the prime minister's declaration of a state of national emergency in the face of Hurricane Ivan's approach.
For a while last Friday afternoon, we seemed set to plunge into one of our rounds of tribalistic "tro-wud" and political time-wasting. Mercifully, the windbags deflated and we got on to dealing with the real storm. We now await the report to Parliament about the emergency measure, what has been achieved by it and when will it end. For once, popular opinion has been on the prime minister's side for the way he is handling the post-Ivan strategies, but he shouldn't take it for granted.

Meanwhile, you have to ask: If a national disaster cannot bring us together, what can? What if many of us are currently lacking water and light? We have life... And while we're at it, let's wish success for Danville Walker who has the unenviable task of getting us to work together in the reconstruction process.

Day of Reckoning: I hope the Government will have the courage to create legislation if necessary, or enforce what is being ignored, to put the brakes on the growing practice of people building houses anywhere they want without regard for the environmental consequences and the cost to the nation as a whole. What kind of society permits houses to be built in a riverbed, or on the edge of slopes where the land is so fragile that winds can reduce it to rubble in no time at all?

Nuff Respect: To utility workers - JPSCo, NWC, Cable and Wireless crews for their remarkable contribution to the restoration of normality. Long way to go yet, but they deserve every commendation. To media workers, radio in particular, who stayed at their posts to keep the nation informed, night and day, all last weekend. To the security forces - army, police and some private security firms, who braved the weather and the bandits. Things would have been much worse without their vigilance, and to private sector leaders who have kick-started the hurricane relief fund.
Thanks all!

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