A top Red Cross official is encouraging continued focus on the catastrophic outcomes of Hurricane Melissa here, saying it will serve to keep much-needed resources flowing into the country for the long haul.

Loyce Pace, regional director for the Americas at International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies, made the recommendation in an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday after completing another reconnaissance of the devastation wreaked by the Category 5 storm which hit Jamaica on October 28, tunnelling through the island’s south and western coasts.

The devastation had not only “shocked” her but left a lasting impression.

“I do think that continuing to focus on what happened with Hurricane Melissa, it does sustain regional and global attention so that the country and these organisations get the resources to the communities. It happens in other parts of the world, there is an earthquake, a tsunami, and people mobilise and there are not just folks who show up but there is money that comes in and that’s something Jamaica needs,” Pace said.

She said while Jamaica’s Government has been proactive in crafting its disaster risk financing strategy which secured catastrophe insurance coverage from the World Bank, the damage caused by storm, the likes of which has never visited the island before, will require much more.

“The Government was great about having insurance and having its own plan, but with a third of the GDP (gross domestic product) gone in an instant, it’s gonna take a lot. It’s not necessarily just hands and hearts, it’s dollars and cents that need to come into this work and when that doesn’t flow that can present some challenges,” she noted.

In the meantime, Pace, in describing the level of support shown to Jamaica so far from donors globally as “incredible”, said, “I think what we do also see often is that people don’t realise how important it is to sustain that support especially into that phase three of recovery which is not a week, it’s not a month, it’s a year, it’s longer.”

“There are Jamaicans, volunteers from the Red Cross, people from the diaspora who have come back and they can’t believe what they are seeing in Westmoreland, in Black River… it’s literally building back from the ground up,” she said.

Meanwhile Pace, who oversees all IFRC’s assistance and advice to Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ National Societies (group) in the Americas region, ensuring effective disaster and crisis risk management, has urged patience in response to concerns from some quarters about the perceived slow rate of recovery.

“This was a Category 5 storm and I don’t know if people, without seeing it, really appreciate the pure devastation especially over a wide swathe of the south western part of the country. I live in Panama but really seeing it during this trip…the terrain and the circumstances itself presents some very reasonable challenges,” Pace pointed out.

“I think the image that will stay with me, looking at the places affected, I was shocked at how much it looked like a forest fire or like a tornado came through, it’s not just homes falling over or branches on the ground, it’s entire fields flattened; there is nothing on the trees, they are just dark and brown, it’s just gone. Even huge buildings you thought should have, could have withstood some of this devastation… I think it needs to sink in not just here in Kingston, but outside the country, that this was a real thing that came through. It’s not nothing,” Pace added.

On the other hand, she said the quest for normality also has its place.

“We have to appreciate the impatience that that could be some form of anxiety — it was frightening to be waiting on the storm to come, to hear that it was going to be as strong as it was, I think it is human to want to get back to life, get back to normal, the reality is recovery is long,” she noted.

She, in the meantime, lauded the army of volunteers who have grounded the efforts of the Red Cross here.

“They have really been on the frontlines for the past couple weeks and they did a lot to prepare for the storm and so I was able to, in this trip, show up and thank them for what they have been doing because it’s been hard and people really have been going full speed since before Melissa hit and I don’t know how many people appreciate that a lot of the volunteers Jamaica Red Cross mobilised are also from these parishes, so they are personally affected,” Pace told the Observer.

At last check there are still about 100 shelters housing some 1,000 individuals still open, with about 20 per cent of those being managed by the Red Cross.

For Pace, who has worked on the ground in more than 15 countries delivering health programmes and mobilising advocates, the spirit of Jamaicans despite Hurricane Melissa’s death blow has made a lasting impression.

“The other thing that stays with me is something less tangible. It’s this inherent resilience; not once have I met someone who said ‘I might as well give up, I have no hope’. No, and that is equally incredible, given the devastation. It’s not easy to get up the next day and look around and not know exactly how you are going to figure it out, especially for our volunteers still showing up not knowing how their families are doing. So that unity, that solidarity, that humanity on display I can take that anywhere,” she said.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness told Parliament that preliminary figures have put the cost of damage to Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa at about US$6 billion to US$7 billion. He said that sum is equivalent to 28 to 32 per cent of last fiscal year’s GDP.

PACE… I think the image that will stay with me, looking at the places affected, I was shocked at how much it looked like a forest fire or like a tornado came through