The narrow cul-de-sac which marks the end of Riverview Avenue in Tavern, St Andrew is truly a dead end. Eleven mail boxes nailed to one post are now a mockery because some will be empty forever since the occupants of the houses they were for are either dead or no longer care to live at those addresses.

BERNARD. missing and feared dead

That is because several houses - some residents say more than five - collapsed in the area which is located along the Hope River Thursday night into Friday morning during the onslaught of Tropical Storm Gustav which swept the island in a destructive and deliberate slow march of death.

One of those structures housed 24-year-old Kevin Bernard, who is missing and feared dead.

According to Bernard's relatives and neighbours, he might have been alive today had he abandoned his fear of the cold waters of the Hope River and trusted his would-be rescuers who tried to coax him to safety seconds before the house was swallowed by the water.

The river had broken its banks and torn down the retaining wall behind the structure on its vicious path. The owner of the house narrowly escaped death by jumping onto a nearby tree just seconds before the house fell.

A 25-year-old resident who gave her name only as Toya - and whose house was also destroyed when the river climbed its banks to eat her entire backyard and the underbelly of the two-storey house in which she lived with her three-year-old son - said a tree saved the life of her uncle.

Stedman Bloomfield, uncle to missing man Kevin Bernard, tells of his close association with his nephew. (Photos: Michael Gordon)

He had dived for safety when the river, which had eaten away the foundations of the house, proceeded to suck the rest of the structure from the banks.

"My uncle was in his upstairs and downstairs house and Kevin was in there and the house started to collapse and my uncle jumped off and hang on to a tree, that's why he's not dead," said Toya.

"The guys were telling him (Kevin) to come out but he said he was not coming out because he's cold. Up till now we don't know if they found his body. It's the first [time] from I've been living here for so many years [that I've] seen the river take its course so," she said.

Even as she reminisced on her neighbour's death, her own furniture and other household items were piled high in the centre of the street. The gate through which she would access her yard to enter her apartment now swings open over empty space; the landspace that had also served as her yard and wash area was gone forever.

Regret lined the face of Kevin's aunt, Joan, who walked away slowly to sit on the side of her house before speaking. She was near tears.

"Him mother deh a farrin', she nuh help none of her children, she is a wicked woman, him have no mother, no father," she mourned.
"Mi feel him drown because di way him coward him woulda jus' give up. Kevin fraid a di river wata bad," she said.

According to Joan, she had always been encouraging him to leave the house where he perished and stay at his own dwelling which he had begun erecting on a plot of land donated to him by an uncle.

"If him did jus' hear what mi seh an go up. Him tell mi seh 'aunty, mi a go up', an him nevah do it," she said softly.

Residents had fond memories of Kevin who, although he was said to have a drug problem, was "conscious of himself" and was a handy fellow who could be called upon to do any odd job.
Some said they were wishing he would just appear and put an end to what was beginning to feel like a nightmare, but his aunt feared the worst.

"If Kevin nevah dead him woulda deh bout di place," she said. "Right now, if him nevah dead him would a walk bout di place a ask fi roast and him naw do no work if yuh nah pay him and yuh haffi pay him the amount him tell yuh. Kevin missed by everybody down here."

Stedman Bloomfield, Kevin's uncle, was somewhat at a loss for words.

"Him grow with me, yuh know. From him mother leave him with me from him was bout six," Bloomfield said. I give him a house spot and some guys trouble him and upset him and him leave an come down here."

Kevin's sister, Nadine, who spoke with the Observer by phone, expressed anguish that no trace of her brother had been found since.

"If is even the body so we can bury him decent, we are mourning his loss," she said, noting that queries at the Harbour View and Papine police stations had yielded no clues.

But even in the midst of the pain being felt by Riverview, bullets were being traded Saturday by rival gangs from Campview and Backroad in nearby Kintyre. Several persons watched the figures of the gunmen from the Gordon Town main road at a safe distance. Some were heard expressing their anguish as they feared they would not be able to enter their community.

Three Jamaica Defence Force soldiers, who were en route to Gordon Town, were forced to make fresh plans and call for reinforcements. They, however, refused to respond to the Observer when asked if they intended to enter the area.

It is understood that two persons were killed in the general area on Friday as a result of an ongoing gang war.

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