Apocalyptic, gothic, ominous are three adjectives that jumped out at me when I first drove into Cornwall county 48 hours after the second most devastating hurricane in world history destroyed it.

It became steadily worse as I approached Holland Bamboo. After driving through Holland Bamboo, it became a nightmare.

Living in Kingston, and looking at photos will not give you a true picture of the disaster that has happened to Jamaica. I say Jamaica, even though Cornwall county is 10 times worse than Surrey and Middlesex. This is because the impact of the hurricane will have national consequences.

All of the foreign income derived from agriculture that is grown in the west is gone. The hotels in that particular zone are all damaged in some way, and many are beyond short-term repair. Damage to infrastructure that has to be borne by the Government is massive and will cost billions of US dollars.

For the first time since the end of the apprenticeship period, Jamaica truly has a homeless crisis. You see, we’ve always had a squatter problem. That is why we didn’t have a homeless problem. At this moment, 95 per cent of Cornwall county is affected and more than half of the poor are homeless. The dislocation of so many people from their homes provides a new pipeline to gang growth, as they are coming and they are desperate.

Although the hunger problem in the main towns, to a large degree, has been temporarily alleviated, we are struggling to feed the districts that are in the hills cut off from vehicle use and too far for everyone to hike. I believe this is a reasonable summary of how much trouble we are in. So let’s talk solutions.

Firstly, this is neither the first nor the worst crisis that Jamaica has been through. Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, although a Category 3, impacted every parish from St Thomas to Westmoreland, from eastern lighthouse to western lighthouse. Every parish looked as bad as the worst parts of Trelawny, but none as bad as Westmoreland and St Elizabeth. So the scale of damage in totality was worse than what Melissa has done.

On the bright side, Jamaica has turned up. I see everybody, from the churches, to corporate, to the average person, everybody is giving.

The use of private pick-ups because of the inability of trucks to traverse the low, broken light poles has reminded me of the Dunkirk troop lift at the beginning of World War II to rescue British troops. Regular people with no agenda, no connection to any aid agency have been using their own units to traffic food into Cornwall.

Foreign aid has begun to be disbursed with the use of foreign helicopters. Slowly but surely, the issues are being attacked. The aid is now moving in the direction of temporary housing solutions such as tarpaulins.

This is a short-term problem with a long-term financial impact. There have been criticisms regarding the speed at which aid begun reaching people in crisis. Let me spell it out for you. This is not a storm, this is not a common hurricane. This is the second most powerful hurricane in the history of recorded hurricanes.

No country, no matter how wealthy, could respond at the speed that the victims of the storm would have wanted them to. You see, it comes down to logistics. Leading up to the storm we were told to stock up. So we bought the warehouses dry. The hurricane hit cut off the supply of food for days and washed away a lot of what was stocked.

The roads are impassable because of fallen trees and utility poles blocking the route to most major towns and all minor towns and districts. Jamaica does not keep warehouses of canned foods sufficient enough to serve the needs of so many affected people. Neither do we have enough helicopters to facilitate any major food drops. The few shops that have goods can’t use cards because of the power and wireless loss and victims can’t access money from ABMs because they are empty, or also without power.

This would serve as a body blow to any Government or country, irrespective of size.

So here is what we have to do now. We have to continue the movement of food stuff to the affected county. We can use trucks to get them to the major towns, but we still need the Dunkirk approach to get the food to the affected districts.

Well, you elected all these councillors, it’s time to use them up. They know how to find everybody, that’s how they won their divisions. If you are worried about particularism or nepotism, then give both the councillors and the caretakers. This is one time I don’t think you have to worry about corruption. They are under too much pressure to deliver some assistance to even think of that.

If you have your own issues with politicians, then give to the organisations that have a history of performance such as Food For the Poor or Father Richard Ho Lung’s Missionaries of the Poor. I guarantee they will get the job done.

This is not the time for disunity and distraction. Our political leaders need to appear united or they will divide Jamaica and further the suffering of the people who have lost everything. If you have issues, work them out behind closed doors. We don’t need to know about them. Put us first!

There has to be a consolidated effort, and you have to involve the professionals. The Diaspora will help not only their own family, but the national effort. They always step up. As I said before, this is a short-term problem. Within a year the homeless will reconstruct the little they had before.

In the initial stages, they will use the abundance of second-hand board and zinc that are all over the place. Many will later rebuild with assistance from the Government or from their families, both at home and in the Diaspora. They will receive assistance from professional charitable organisations. They will receive assistance from the rest of us. But we need to engage the professionals at this point or all we are doing is giving the same people groceries every day and neglecting those who also need assistance in the districts.

As I said before, there are channels through churches, the political representative structure and reputable, charitable organisations. It is important that we continue to give as the crisis will take months to be alleviated.

What have we learned from this?

Well, it would be nice if we made an effort to transition to concrete housing, particularly in Westmoreland. There are food items commonly stocked by conspiracy theorists in the United States that last up to 40 years. I think we need a crisis warehouse in every major town across Jamaica that is stocked with these types of food. It is less perishable, nobody wants to eat it really so nobody will steal it. But it will keep you alive and healthy actually until you can get assistance.

It would have been a lot easier to get assistance to the districts if we never had to rely on relatively small pick-ups to carry provisions to the towns, largely because we could have focused our efforts on the districts if the town needs had been alleviated. The above noted town warehouse can help with this issue in the future.

We need to establish a protocol for a large refugee camp that can become operational and that we can truck people to, not only in the future, but perhaps in this current crisis amidst concerns about security in the shelters and lack of resources. It is easier to secure and resource one major refugee camp than 182 shelters.

This would also help the risk of diseases breaking out because everybody is passing their waste in rivers or in bushes. This is a prescription for a health crisis. The last time cholera broke out in Jamaica in a real way it killed one-third of us. So either get the homeless into a refugee camp with a lot of toilets, maybe even the National Stadium, or start resourcing these shelters to accommodate the sewage needs of the occupants.

I have spent quite a few days in Cornwall county as part of a Jamaica Constabulary Force initiative to assist the affected police divisions with resources and public order policing. It is depressing to see so many who had so little, descend to now have nothing at all. I found it was affecting my mood.

Whilst driving late afternoon on Monday I saw a Jamaican flag hung high and proud in the midst of the devastated hillside in Westmoreland. It was perfect, undamaged, so I imagine it must have been hung after the storm.

I believed then and I believe now that this is a message from God through the person who hung it — that we will not just survive this crisis but we will thrive as a country, and as a united people.

Jamaica has survived slavery, indentureship, colonialism, imperialism, the 70s civil war, Hurricane Gilbert, and the worst gang crisis in the Caribbean.

We will overcome this also.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com

Jason Mckay