Jamaica Observer Online, in association with a number of partners, has produced its 2024 Hurricane Season Guide. This is one of the many stories in the supplement which can be accessed here.

With a plastic cup filled with rum and water in his hand and a cigarette perched between his lips, George Campbell called up the painful memory of losing his parents in flood waters during the passage of Tropical Storm Gustav in 2008.

Campbell, a resident of Kintyre in St Andrew, recalled the night Tropical Storm Gustav made landfall in Jamaica, and how he tried to get his parents, Leonard and Hannah Campbell, out of their house before disaster struck.

“You see 2008 was a drastic moment,” Campbell told Observer Online.

“Me baby mother, my mother and father and me 10 youth dem deh home. Gustav came in the night and that night me look on me baby mother and me say ‘Empress the river a come down, me ago call me mother and father, come out of the house’. She start say nothing nuh wrong, but me say ‘Come out the house Tish, the river a come down’,” the Rastafarian man recounted.

The Campbell family lived in a yard with three houses on the bank of Hope River which flowed through the Kintyre community. Over the years, the river was known for overflowing its banks during heavy rainfall and storms.

“So me go to my mother and father and tell them fi come out a fi dem house. A three houses we did have enuh, right down at the bridge. When me tell dem fi come out the house, my mother and father a say them tired a this so me say ‘what you mean, you nuh see the place a wash weh, unuh nah come out?’” Campbell recalled before taking a sip of his drink, as if attempting to wash the bitter memory away.

In response to his parents’ decision to stay in the house, Campbell said he used expletives towards them for the first time. However that was still not enough to convince them to evacuate their home. By this time, Campbell’s house, which was at the front of the family yard, had been carried away by floodwaters. Fortunately, his 10 children and partner Tish, were safe.

“Ah the first time me ever use indecent language at my parents, and them say ‘Son we tired of this. Every time storm come we haffi go people yard, we tired of it’. Me say see my house wash weh deh. That time my house at the front, my mother and father house in the middle and the next house in the back of the yard. Me go upstairs on the balcony and call them and them say ‘Me tired of this’. You see when the house a move, me use indecent language again and them say them tired of it,” Campbell said, shaking his head.

“So me jump off the building and the house wash weh and me just hear people a bawl. The water came all the way up on the second floor of my mother and father house. Me hear my mother and father a bawl fi help,” he added.

At the memory of his mother and father being carried away by the river, Campbell finished his drink, before refilling his cup with more rum and water. Taking a sip, he disclosed that he is the one who found his mother’s body, broken, beaten and bruised in Harbour View. His father’s body was never recovered.

Following the tragic incident, Campbell said he had to be admitted to Belleview Hospital for psychiatric treatment. He also turned to cocaine for seven years, and has kept up with a lifestyle of alcohol and smoking, he said.

He said it is his children who have kept him alive.

“A me pickney dem a keep me alive. It devastating. All of my youth dem a keep me alive today,” Campbell said.

He revealed that when the hurricane season rolls around each year, the memory of his parents’ deaths comes rushing back like a river.

Tropical Storm Gustav made landfall in Jamaica on August 28, 2008, with hurricane force winds. It devastated parts of the country, and in total an estimated 153 people were reportedly killed in the United States and the Caribbean from the passage of the storm.