According to then 11-year-old Phyllis Kelly, the atmosphere was as red as blood and even though there was no fire, smoke was everywhere.

She was remembering that fateful August 17 evening, 64 years ago that marked the arrival of one of the most destructive hurricanes ever to hit the shores of Jamaica — Hurricane Charlie.

“We had not seen anything like that before, the day before it (Charlie) came, the whole place was like how you see Riverton did have the smoke…the day was blue at first but as 7’o clock hit, it turn red like when the sun setting in the evenings”, a now 75-year-old Kelly told the Jamaica Observer.

Kelly who was living in St Thomas when Hurricane Charlie hit the island in 1951 said that the wooden house she and her family was living in at the time, was left without a roof in the aftermath of the system. Kelly who was living with her mother, brother and sister at the time, said luckily they were not hurt by the storm.

With only the frame of their house left standing, Kelly said the family had to take refuge in neighbours’ houses and some persons were hosted under a tent that was later provided.

“We had a lot of fowls and so we cooked them using a fire we mek up wid just a quarter of kerosene oil and so we cook the fowls and roast breadfruit”, the elderly woman said.

However the fowls and breadfruit could only last for so long as Kelly said for a good while they didn’t have anything to eat, for months after, it was just rice and flour and whatever food that was washed up.

But not everyone fared as well as Phyllis and her family, despite their gloomy circumstances.

“The river was high and a man went across to go look for his children but it wash him weh, they found his body three miles from where he was before”, Kelly recalled as she highlighted that this river once known as Negro river by locals was just a little tributary before Charley.

“Yu see when the river come down till it stink, the river smells so bad and yu nuh leave yu house unless you want to drown”, she said , emphasizing that she couldn’t leave her house for two months because she lived directly across from the river.

Kelly said unlike now where there are concrete bridges, back in her day, during the aftermath of Charlie, they had to use coconut trees as bridges. She said they would hollow out the trunk of the tree, cut off the leaves, put on some bamboo railings and then put it across the river as a makeshift bridge.

She said one had to be very careful crossing the makeshift bridge as because it was just the trunk of a tree it could easily ‘pop wid you go down in the water and yu dead’. She said their makeshift bridge was the only bridge they had to use at the time and they had to wait until the river went down.

“When the river not suh muddy and not so stink, we pack some big stones so you could walk on the stones but yu hav to tek time walk because if the stone slippery yu drop in the water or you might even lose a foot of your shoes”, she stated as an alternate route to cross the river.

The former Cedar Valley Elementary School student, who celebrated her eleventh birthday just 16 days before Charlie hit the island, said school was a good way off and for a long while they were unable to go to school.

But Kelly wasn’t the only one who remembered the destructive path of the hurricane as at the opposite end of the island, Charlie was also wreaking havoc.

“I was at home in Manchester the afternoon and we had battened up the entire house with boards…we had glass windows so we had to batten up”, recalled former police officer and journalist TK Whyte.

He said afterwards the family went to bed and he remembered being awakened around nine the next morning and going outside.

“Every banana tree, every orange tree was down and you could look a mile away and see more trees down”, Whyte said.

Whyte who lived on a farm at the time said when he went out to the family’s garden; the stone walls that were erected had been blown down leaving just rubble behind.

According to Whyte around one in the afternoon persons were out and about surveying the damage and picking up fruits such as mangoes and bananas off the roads, which were thankfully not too damaged, save for a few trees that had fallen.

“No rain came with it, it was just breeze alone… a lot of persons wanted to hear the wind, but they didn’t”, said Whyte.

“It was very devastating, horrible and terrifying as it was the first time I had experienced anything like this”, Whyte told the Sunday Observer.

He described the day before as being very calm and that there was a lot of talking at school about the hurricane. Whyte said adults and children alike were excited and wanted to experience a hurricane which was a first for them, but in the end it turned out to be very frightening for people.

According to another person who witnessed hurricane Charlie and was living in Kingston at the time, not everyone was so concerned about the hurricane as she can remember her aunt who lived next door to her saying” cho nuh rain naa come”.

She said this was in a sense true because Charlie brought more winds than rain and it was the winds that really caused the damage.

“I don’t think any other hurricane did as much damage that Charlie did,” she said.

(Kelly 1)

Phyllis Kelly talks about her experiences in 1951 having witnessed Hurricane Charlie.

(PHOTO: GARFIELD ROBINSON)