FEWER than 10 people yesterday checked themselves into shelters in the Gordon Town area of St Andrew East Rural despite warnings and concerns that Category Four Hurricane Matthew is expected to significantly impact the island as it makes its way over the Windward Passage between the island and Haiti.

The rural constituency, which consists of several rivers and mountainous terrain, have been battered by cyclones over the years, threatening life and triggering landslides and flooding.

However, several residents have insisted that Matthew, which has been identified as one of the most dangerous hurricanes in recent times, will “come and go like the rest”.

“We just a cool and a easy and a wait it out. Nothing naah happen. We live through Gilbert, Gustav and Ivan and we still deh here,” one man said as he sat at a shop in the community square.

“If it ah come it ah come, but suh far we nuh see nothing,” another man added.

Yesterday, only six residents had turned up at the Louise Bennett Coverley All-Age School in the constituency, one of four designated shelters there.

But shelter coordinator Winston Jackson, who spoke with the Jamaica Observer, insisted that residents will eventually come when they feel more threatened.

“The people are not going to move until they really see the mountains coming down or when they can’t cross the river. That is how they are,” Jackson said.

Newly elected Member of Parliament (MP) Juliet Holness expressed concerns about residents’ aversion to move, even as the Meteorological Service downgraded the country’s status from a hurricane watch to a tropical storm watch.

“[There] are quite a few persons living across the river; I’ve spoken to them already [but] they have not yet moved. They have indicated that they will go up on the river bank with neighbours and friends but we are going to continue, to encourage persons to pack up their stuff and try to move out,” Holness said.

The first-time MP added that she was equally concerned that the hurricane had slowed down, at the time moving at five miles per hour, and suggested that it would stand a greater threat if it remained that way.

“What it does is to give a false sense of security that the hurricane isn’t coming. And we want persons to understand that once it is slower it means far more rainfall, particularly in areas like east rural St Andrew, and it is absolutely dangerous. We are now more prone to flooding than we would have been if it was moving faster and left our shores,” she said.

In the meantime, Beres Maxwell, one of the six residents who heeded the MPs call to evacuate low-lying areas, said he did so because he felt that the shelter was safer.

“Mi think it safer to come a di shelter because where me live now is problem. Mi live pon the hillside and anything can happen. So mi come di lower part weh mi can know seh mi safe. We think it more safe down here. The only thing we want now is some food and some money round here,” he told the Observer.

Ten-year-old Marissa Ridley, who was taken by her mother to the shelter, said while she was unhappy about the storm she understood that it was necessary to.

“I’m feeling happy here because when I’m at home water can come inside the house and damage it and the animals and us. So I just come out here because it’s safe, but I’m unhappy because I don’t want it to come,” she said.