WHILE tending to tourists during the passage of Hurricane Melissa, hotel bar attendant Allison Alexander received the most devastating news: Her home was flattened by the forceful winds of the Category 5 system.

Now, she and her seven-year-old daughter are among the scores of Jamaicans who have lost everything and are homeless.

“Is my [hotel] uniform I left standing with, just my uniform alone. I have to go wash out the four suits I have down at the hotel and put them out to dry because when I thought I could even get some [clothes from] here [the site where her house once stood], there is nothing I can get here. I only have four [underwear] and four suits of clothes, which is my uniform,” the St Ann hotel worker told the Jamaica Observer, staring at the remains in disbelief.

The single mother of three, who lives in Royal Palm district near Runaway Bay, said the situation is the same for her daughter — the only child who lives with her. Alexander said her daughter was staying with a family member during the passage of the hurricane and had only packed a few items of clothing, which were destroyed when that relative’s roof was ripped off and they were left battling heavy rains.

She explained that while the hotel had made accommodations for staff members and their families to stay there until the weather system passed, she’d decided at the last minute to share her room with a colleague who had made arrangements to go home before the hurricane but was trapped when weather conditions deteriorated faster than anticipated. Together, she said, they worked to ensure the safety of tourists from the Friday before the system made landfall to last Wednesday, ignorant of the homelessness that awaited them both.

“The hotel where I work, the guests got five-star service because we put up shelter for them, and we ensured that they got food. We closed the lobby [last] Monday at 4:00 pm, and that was the last time we served alcohol, and we locked it up. We took them to the theatre and we ensured they were good. I set up a coffee and juice station in the theatre…We took them from their room, put them in the passage, and put them in the beach chairs. We gave them blankets and everything.

“In the theatre, they were watching movies while we provided service. Right through the night, we had coffee for them. We prepared food in boxes; we take them by the stairs to the buffet, and they eat their dinner. When the theatre got damaged, I put them in another safe place, and right throughout the night I served them. As I wake up, I leave my room, I bathe, I clock in, and I take care of the guests.

“Meanwhile I’m taking care of the guests, my house is flat. Everything in my house mash up and I don’t have anything,” she shared, her voice cracking as reality set in.

Alexander said the news came in a message from her neighbours last Wednesday. She informed her supervisor and left the hotel to assess the damage a day later.

The Sunday Observer team visited what was left of her home last Thursday and witnessed utter destruction. The two-bedroom, wooden structure that once had a bathroom, kitchen, and a veranda was now flat. A fallen tree that crushed the walls of the house lay in what was once a bedroom. Clothes were seen scattered — still wet from the showers of rain and covered in dirt. At the edge of the foundation of the house, a mattress was propped up to dry, covered in dirt and debris. The zinc from her roof was nowhere to be found, seemingly gone with the wind.

“Everything wet up and everything flat. I don’t have anything here for me. Everything mash up — fridge, washing machine, television, my dresser, my bed. A tree fell down in my house and broke up all of the dresser and the bed bottom. The only thing I have that survived is the bed bottom that was in the front room. The mattress is not good; it’s dirty, and it’s torn up. Everything blew away and was torn up: My stove, my sofa. I don’t have anything in my house,” she shared, looking at the remains.

“My daughter and I don’t have anywhere to live. We don’t have anywhere to sleep; no clothes or anything…If I knew that my house was flat and I had come home to this, I would wear [some] of my clothes that I have down in my room, but I just wear my name tag with the hotel uniform,” she added.

Since the arrangements for the provision of accommodation at the hotel were not expected to go beyond the end of last week, Alexander is clueless about her next step.

“I don’t know where to turn or what to do because the hotel can only keep me for a certain amount of time. They can’t keep me forever. I don’t know where to start. The little money I get paid at the hotel can’t do anything; the money is small. The prime minister is not looking out for me, because the minimum wage can’t do anything.

“Sixteen thousand dollars [per 40-hour work week] can’t fix back a whole house. My house was a two bedroom with a kitchen, veranda, and bathroom, and everything flat; see the tree drop in it. I don’t have anything, and I never get any gratuity.

“Sixteen thousand [a week] is my basic pay; that can’t do anything,” she said, calling for an immediate increase in the national minimum wage.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced while campaigning for the 2025 General Election that the Government would continue its efforts to increase the country’s minimum wage to $32,000 over the next couple of years. In 2022, the minimum wage moved from $7,000 to $9,000 per 40-hour work. A year later, in 2023, it was increased from $9,000 to $13,000 per 40-hour work week, and last year, the minimum wage was raised from $13,000 to $15,000 per 40-hour work week. The change to $16,000 came in June of this year.

Now left to transform debris into a home, Alexander said her next few nights could see her sleeping in the cold.

“When the hotel sends me out, where am I going to go? I am going to have to go under a piece of one of the boards here and lie down. I don’t have anywhere to turn. I don’t have anybody to knock up anything for me. All the zinc that blow off people take them away. Everywhere it blow gone; I don’t even have one sheet a zinc to say maybe if somebody renders assistance I can put something together and go under,” she sighed in defeat as she cried for help.

“If anybody can help me, please, I am begging you. I don’t have anything,” said an emotional Alexander.

A tree now occupies the space that was once the home of Allison Alexander, a bar attendant at a hotel in St Ann. Amid the splintered wood and scattered debris, only a bed frame endures, a haunting reminder of what used to be before Hurricane Melissa tore the place apart.