PORT MARIA, St Mary — Health authorities here said they faced strong resistance when they tried to seize condemned goods from some businesses that were hit by the massive flood in Port Maria on February 1.

“We faced a lot of opposition and a lot of pushback from persons because they did not want us to take the things that necessitated being dumped. They wanted to have the option to wash these things off and to sell them again in Port Maria,” medical officer of health for St Mary Dr Tamara Henry told this month’s sitting of the St Mary Municipal Corporation on Thursday when it was disclosed that several goods ended up being dumped.

She added that, due to the challenges, it was decided that health personnel “really need to have an incident command system in place” to carry out such operations.

Acting chief public health inspector for St Mary Jacinth Lewis-Bygrave said the decision to dump damaged goods was a great loss to some of the businesses.

“A large amount of food items were condemned,” Lewis-Bygrave said.

Chairman of the municipality, Mayor Richard Creary, questioned if the health personnel were less than considerate in seizing some of the items. He stated that the authorities, for example, could have asked business owners to throw away liquor and keep their bottles and crates.

“They (health personnel) took a number of crates and bottles that the people could have resold, and they throw them in the van and I am pretty sure those never end up in the dump,” Creary added.

But Dr Henry retorted, “Don’t say you are pretty sure. I bet you never follow the vans, but the vans went directly to the dump.”

Dr Henry and Lewis-Bygrave admitted that, while seizing some items may not have been the best option, unnecessary seizure was not the norm.

“In hindsight, maybe some of the things that were done initially were not the best choice…” Dr Henry said.

“There are individuals, when you go to their property, you don’t even have the option to open things and throw away [the portion that is bad]. They are very feisty; they don’t even want to cooperate with us sometimes and it is quite difficult to work with them.”

Added Dr Henry: “Based on our assessment when we go to the facilities, we actually look at where the water level is. We understand that there are some business owners that move the items up and some people actually try to wash these items off. So sometimes, based on what we observe when we go into the establishments, we know that these items were actually submerged and they were removed, because we can see where the water level rose to. Sometimes the persons who own these businesses are not looking for those things, but we do. We are not going to discard persons’ items if they are only splashed [with flood water]. We discard them when we know that they have been contaminated.”

The chief medical officer also indicated that, due to the behaviour of some business operators, she would not be surprised if a number of items that should have been dumped ended up back on shelves.

“Some people try to wash down and wash off things and we have to be very, very careful because, even if those items are sealed, remember that this flood water contains all manner of things. In the next couple of months, if there are some people who have hidden things from us, there are going to be individuals that are buying soda and when they open the cap there is mud underneath. Even though it looks sealed, they have been contaminated,” Dr Henry said.

Creary, in the meantime, said he is not trying to undermine the role health personnel play following disasters such as the recent flood.