HOLLAND, Trelawny – Rueben Malcolm, now 72, was among the hundreds of Trelawny residents who were left homeless when Hurricane Gilbert, a devastating category four storm, slammed the island in 1988.

At that time, his house located in Maxfield, a remote community five miles from Trelawny’s capital Falmouth, and his belongings, were almost completely destroyed by the strong winds and their accompanying heavy rainfall.

Then 55, his home gone, Malcolm’s best option after the storm was to stay in an emergency shelter at a school close to Maxfield.

But he could not stay there for long. The school was needed for the education of the community’s children and so Malcolm had to find other accommodation.

Luckily, he thought then, one of his buddies invited him to capture a piece of crown land in a heavily vegetated and swampy area.

The friend had already captured a large section of the property and taking note of Malcolm’s dilemma, he decided to help.

“Me friend say to me ‘Malcolm, come take piece a de capture land in a Zion’, so me take piece and build a little house yah so,” Malcolm said pointing to his small house constructed on waterlogged soil.

The elderly man’s tale is easily replicated in several ‘at-risk’ and rural communities across Jamaica, often populated by persons with limited income and few options for acquiring property.

Government’s disaster management and environment agencies know each of the danger zones, but for now there is no cohesive plan either to remove residents, or one for a full-scale evacuation if a big storm, akin to what engineers refer to as a 100-year event, were to hit Jamaica.

Now, even in rural towns, the experience of far-away New Orleans, which was all but destroyed in August, and the memory of hurricanes Emily and Dennis, have raised concerns and fears that their lives could be in serious danger in similar circumstances.

Malcolm was among the first six persons to capture and construct houses in the swampy community, part of the ecologically-sensitive morass, adjoining Falmouth, the Trelawny capital.

Falmouth itself is a low-lying seaside town, protected by a very low seawall, which exists only at some sections of the shoreline.

There is really no protective barrier to keep the sea at bay if a really big wave rears up over the town.

Having lived in the wetlands for almost two decades, and experiencing at least four floodings, Malcolm and his neighbours now want government to relocate them.

“Me want to relocate, but government must put us at a place where we are comfortable,” Malcolm said, adding that the more than 500 persons now living in the area were willing to pay to be relocated.

Carol Spence, who has been living in the area for just over 12 years, said too she would be willing to pay for a better place to live.

“We willing to leave here but we want government to put us somewhere, where we have light, water and telephone and later get land titles,” Spence said, adding that she was willing to pay for the house.

Zion, located two miles from Falmouth, lies in proximity to the newly constructed Holland High School and the longstanding William Knibb High.

The small swampy community lies in a valley between the recently constructed North Coast Highway and Carib Road.

The soil type coupled with its location makes the community susceptible to flooding.

“Whenever it rains, everybody start to wonder if the place is going to flood out because water wash from all over the place and settle down here,” Spence noted.

Spence, a mother of seven, has been flooded out of her small dwelling at least four times since taking up residence in the community. But it was the flooding in July brought on by Hurricane Emily that has made her want to leave in a hurry.

“When Emily come, it was the first time me see round here flood out so,” Spence said.

“The water reach me up to me breast inna me house, and little after me come outside and look, me house almost cover,” she said.

Luckily, her children were evacuated to the nearby Holland High School before the flood waters came.

During the July flood rains, the more than 500 residents living in the roughly 165 houses in the community were forced to move into the emergency shelters.

“Everybody lose plenty things. We lose we clothes, furniture, shoes, we mattress … almost everything,” Spence said.

She added that after the flooding subsided residents were faced with another challenge – keeping themselves healthy.

“Me see faeces, worms, and all sort of nasty things floating around in the water,” she said.

Most of the homes in the community have free-standing pit latrines, which overflow during heavy rainfall.

Shortly after the July rains, finance and planning minister Dr Omar Davies and a team which included land and environment minister Dean Peart, and Donald Buchanan who has portfolio responsibility for water and housing, visited the community to assess the damage wrought by Emily.

At the time, Davies told the residents that he would impress on prime minister PJ Patterson the need to have them relocated.

The finance minister, however, ruled out suggestions by some residents for temporary relocation to a nearby piece of land owned by the Catholic Church.

Wendell ‘Bull Bull’ Stewart, a former parliamentary representative for North Trelawny, suggested that there has been foot-dragging on the issue, saying that four years ago, shortly after the 2001 flood rains, lands to relocate residents in several flood prone areas in the parish, including Zion, were identified in sections of Hague and Texas.

Stewart, who represented the constituency from 1997 to 2002 before he was replaced by medical doctor Patrick Harris, blamed the slow-moving bureaucracy for the years of failure to remove residents from an area that was an obvious danger.

“The land at Zion is morass and is not suitable for living and we were thinking of a ‘one-time solution’ to the problem, but the then ministry of land did not do any thing,” Stewart charged. “It was just promises, promises…”

Government’s failure to act, he said, also cost the community the 50 houses promised them by Food for the Poor.

“We could not utilise the houses because the condition was that we had to have lands that were guaranteed to the people so that they could live there permanently and that basic infrastructure be put in place,” Stewart said.

He now charges that government is not serious about solving the problem.

But Harris, the sitting MP, insists that Zion residents are about to get help.

“I am very confident that they will be relocated. I am not saying that all will be relocated at once, but opportunities will be made available for them to be relocated,” he told the Sunday Observer.

He gave no precise time, but said the removals might start early next year.

“It will be done in an orderly way, it will not be done in a haphazard way where a person go and just claim a piece of land and say ‘this is mine’,” said Harris. “It will not be done like that.”

Some of the lands would be made available in a section of the nearby community of Hague, said the MP, adding, however, that the lands were still to be secured and that talks were ongoing to acquire the property from government.

But, after four years of waiting, some residents of Zion, unprepared to wait for public officials to seal a new deal, are making their own arrangements to leave the flood-prone community.

Roy Lawrence, 40, who has been living on the captured land with his family of five for five years, told the Sunday Observer that 16 families in the community have pooled their resources and have purchased six acres of land at Irwin Tower, not too far from Zion.

The property, he said, has been subdivided and the families are to do their own home construction.

“We have every intention of moving by December because we really should not be living here,” Lawrence said.

cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com