TROPICAL Storm Nicole has forced us once again to take yet another look at the thorny issue of the county’s fragile infrastructure, large sections of which literally crumbled under the heavy rains that have been lashing the country since Tuesday.

According to the reports carried in this newspaper to date, houses have been uprooted and overturned; roads have broken away, leaving communities marooned; a church in Westmoreland’s capital Savanna-la-Mar fell down and crops have been devastated.

Vital services have been disrupted, schools closed, and everyone is literally at the mercy of the elements as far as making the next move is concerned.

We accept that when it comes to what may, for convenience, be termed ‘Acts of God’ there is only so much we can do to mitigate the consequential damage.

But, are we doing enough?

The question of the vulnerability of key routes such as the Bog Walk Gorge in St Catherine; the Palisadoes and several roads in Harbour View in Kingston; the Fairview main road in St James; and the flood-prone New Market community in St Elizabeth are but a few which come to mind in this regard.

These and other aspects of the country’s infrastructure bear a heavy responsibility in terms of the dependence placed on them by those who must make use of them in order to make their contribution to the well-being of the society.

Why then don’t the relevant authorities do what is necessary to rectify these potentially hazardous routes?

We have been hearing about plans to install barriers which would make it impossible for motorists to navigate the obvious dangers of the Bog Walk Gorge during bad weather.

Yet, once again the State’s resources had to be employed to rescue motorists who were foolhardy enough to try and brave it through.

Every time we have bad weather, the matter of which areas are most likely to be devastated constitute a no-brainer. Are we saying then, that there is nothing, as far as engineering is concerned, to solve these problems?

Based on what we have read, the lives which were lost during the passage of Nicole need not have been.

Mr Lenford Blake, the 73-year-old farmer from St Elizabeth who was swept away by flood waters as he tried — contrary to the advice of his friends — to cross a flooded road, and young Mr Kenji Boyd who was swept away when his house in Sandy Park collapsed into a gully might have been alive today had the destructive potential of tropical storms and hurricanes been taken seriously.

For them, it is too late to take the life-saving precautions that we are going to need for the inevitable next disaster.

For us, it need not be.