Residents in West Green, St James, are lamenting what they describe as the slow response in restoring water to the community over a week after Hurricane Melissa struck, a situation they believe could lead to health risks.

When Observer Online visited the community on Thursday, residents were searching through soiled clothes and damaged belongings, hoping to salvage what they could after floodwaters swept through their homes filling them with mud.

“It’s rough, especially without electricity and water to clean up, because we don’t have any water. More while we have to go round the river to catch water and drag it back and forth,” Shelly, a resident of the community, told Observer Online as she sorted through a barrel of clothing. “Right now a the river me a go, go see if me can shake out some of them here,” she said.

Shelly further expressed concern about the potential risks associated with the lack of access to drinking water, which she said could lead to skin conditions and other health issues.

“After some time, you can catch skin bacteria, ringworm and stuff like those and water contamination, we have to be mindful of that as well. It would be nice if we could get more drinking water and stuff like that because right now it really hard. We need clean water to cook and drink. That is a major concern healthwise,” she added.

As we spoke, a water quality specialist from the Ministry of Health and Wellness showed up distributing flyers in the community outlining various ways residents can treat water for safe use.

“You can do your treatment, get your cloth and do your filtering and then you add your bleach according to the instruction or you boil it,” the representative who wished not to be named advised Shelly.

She also encouraged her to cover her water due to the presence of rats and other insects which may contaminate it.

“See how best you can open and allow the air to go in and what you can get out to the sun, get it out to the sun. Cover your water and all of that because you have a lot of garbage, you might have rats, so you don’t want them to go in there because we don’t want leptospirosis and all of that,” the representative advised.

Coincidentally, as the representative warned Shelly of the possibility of rats and insects being around due to the build-up of garbage, a rat raced past our feet, clearly displaced from its hiding place as workmen from the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) used a tractor to remove debris from the area.

Lloyd Bailey, a veteran soil scientist who also resides in the community, expressed concern about the restoration of water to West Green a week after Hurricane Melissa impacted the island.

“My concern is that the response to water is slow. If I wasn’t wise to instruct them [residents] how to treat their water maybe we would have had illness,” said Bailey during an interview with Observer Online.

Bailey also criticised the organisation among first responders, emphasising that basic necessities such as water and food should be prioritised immediately after a hurricane.

“They have to better organise what they call first [responders]. When you have a hurricane, the first person to go out is the people with water and with food, then after that you start to put on the technicalities as to who gets what, because up to now, this side here, we have not even gotten an ounce of water,” he said.

Jamaica’s drainage infrastructure was another concern for Bailey which he described as being fundamentally flawed for decades.

“All of our drainage systems in this country for the past 40 years is wrong,” Bailey said.

He explained that drainage holes are too small and improperly positioned, without consideration for aerodynamics or the physics of water flow. According to Bailey, many drains become overwhelmed during heavy rainfall, making it impossible to manage flooding effectively.

“All the drainage is wrong, every one of the drainage systems is wrong. So Melissa is an eye-opener for all of us and for Jamaica. Our drainage systems are wrong, our roofing systems are wrong,” he added.