BUILT in the 1950s, Chester Primary and Infant School in St Ann has had very little repairs done over seven decades.

So when Principal Nadine Gordon heard about the approaching Hurricane Melissa, which was at Category Five strength, she was fearful that the school would have been dealt a raw deal when the system made landfall in Jamaica last Tuesday.

But when Melissa unleashed its wrath on the island, the damage to the school paled in comparison to what was meted out in the wider Chester community and other parts of Jamaica.

Hurricane Melissa dumped more than 20 inches of rain in some areas and brought wind speeds as high as 185 miles per hour, devastating most of the Caribbean country.

Many of the houses and farms in Chester were not spared and neither were the wires and utility poles, which were either downed or leaning precariously across roads. Trees of all sizes also weren’t spared.

Gordon told the Jamaica Observer that she’s been reaching out to the parents of her students for updates on how they’re doing.

“We have 125 students, we are a small school. I have been checking in with the parents because the houses are badly damaged but the children are okay. The community of Chester was hit really bad; people lost roofs and homes. In the midst of all that, things aren’t so bad at the school.

“I am really glad that it wasn’t as bad as we anticipated. I thought all the roofs were going to go because it is weak…What we did before was put a lot of things in plastic and so on, that minimised damage to books,” she added.

Gordon told the Sunday Observer that one classroom was exposed to rain after a sheet of zinc was dislodged, wooden structures that lined zinc-covered corridors leading to and from classrooms were uprooted, and water tanks and power lines were destroyed.

“The water tanks and the power, those are the things that will hamper us reopening soon. We are going to start cleaning up starting Monday, but without the power and the water it is going to be a challenge. We have to replace those tanks because there is no water in the National Water Commission main, so we have to have the storage tanks,” she said last Thursday, sharing that the two water-filled tanks burst after being blown away from their positions during the hurricane.

“We have four classrooms really, but they are subdivided, so we have six rooms. We had a lot of water damage because we don’t have doors on our classrooms, only grilles, so water was able to enter. We tried to push the furniture to one side [of the rooms] because we kind of anticipated it. We now have to replace some textbooks and we had like [a] reading corner and so on, those got damaged,“ she explained.

After leaving the school, the Sunday Observer team ventured farther into the community and the destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa was evident.

Steven Archer lamented that the “banana trees are flat and coconut trees are flat”.

“I had a very tall willow tree and that willow tree is down. I thought it just fell down, but it broke out from the root and it wasn’t rotting. The swirling effect of the hurricane did that, it was horrible, man,” Archer said.

Althea Allen was seen sitting outside a wooden house in the community in front of several bath pans and piles of clothes. A section of the roof of her house, which she shares with three children, was torn off. Determined not to be overly stressed about her current situation, she said any help that comes her way would be greatly appreciated.

“Melissa blew off a section of my roof and inside the house wet up…We lost almost everything. All these clothes, we are trying to sort them out and get them up back. The children’s books got messed up. We tried to cover up some things with tarpaulin but it nuh work out because Melissa badder than me. I have life so I don’t worry about it; I just want some help to get back the roof. If I can get the help, I will take the help,” she said.

A young man assesses the damage to a water tank at Chester Primary and Infant School in St Ann, after Hurricane Melissa.

A man steps over a downed utility pole in St Ann on Thursday.