OFFICIALS at the Caribbean Maritime Institute (CMI) on Tuesday said preliminary assessment of the damage to its Palisadoes Road facility caused by Hurricane Dean on Sunday could run into the millions.

According to executive director Fritz Pinnock, the institution’s Seamanship Laboratory – where individuals are trained to become sailors – was the section hardest hit.

He said Hurricane Dean’s category four winds ripped the roof from the laboratory and lodged it in a nearby tree, then blew several specially made life jackets and industrial fire protection suits stored in the lab – each of which costs US$12,000 – into the Kingston Harbour.

Meanwhile, rains associated with the powerful storm rendered the lab’s compressor and sandblasting machine inoperable. Damage to the equipment, the lab’s senior instructor Richard Ramsey said, could run in excess of US$400,000.

“This is one of the integral places that you learn about seamanship. Classes are supposed to start in the first week of September and we’ve lost so much equipment that is critical to the training, right here in this lab alone,” Pinnock told the Observer, adding that the school saw a 300 per cent increase in enrolment for the coming academic year.

Despite the damage to the Seamanship Laboratory, however, the area of the school which has Pinnock most concerned is its full mission bridge simulator, which he said was one of a few such machines in the western hemisphere and would cost US$1 million to replace.

“Here we simulate a full mission on the bridge of a ship for when we are training students. And we can simulate all different types of weather conditions with projectors, like hurricanes or the Kingston Harbour or [other places] in the world,” he explained.

An examination of the equipment after the passage of Hurricane Dean showed signs that water had penetrated several sections of the room housing the full mission bridge, and had also formed a large puddle extremely close to a wire panel attached to the machine.

Pinnock, in the meanwhile, expressed concern that another valuable piece of equipment, a Gantry Crane simulator, was also damaged by the hurricane. The crane, which he said was one of three located in the western hemisphere and is valued at approximately US$1.5 million, uses virtual reality technology to train students to operate various types of lifts. But water penetrated the walls of the machine and had leaked onto the computerised equipment on Sunday.

“We had damage to the dorms and places like that, a few zinc roofs were blown off, but the major concern is the simulators and the [seamanship] lab. Those are critical to the training,” Pinnock told the Observer on Tuesday.