Dear Editor,

I vividly recall an impactful discussion in one of my cultural resource management classes several years ago at The University of the West Indies Mona, Department of History and Archaeology. Professor emeritus Patrick Bryan engaged us in a conversation about the length of time heritage sites should be preserved. This was in the context of the tension between developers and preservationists. The consensus was ‘as long as is humanly possible’.

Recently, that class discussion notched up significantly when ‘Slow-cane’ Melissa etched her name in the annals of Jamaican history on October 28, 2025 when she made landfall. In addition to taking lives and properties in a wave of destruction, she outdid herself by slaughtering the historic town of Black River and did major damage to numerous other historic infrastructure.

Developers will perhaps rightly argue that Black River cannot be salvaged and that its rebuilding will have to be in tandem with modern building standards. To be clear, there is no dispute that the replacement costs of building materials alone for historic buildings such as schools and churches that can be salvaged are exorbitant and going forward informed decisions will have to be made concerning whether they remain as historic buildings or modified structures after these disasters.

The legislative framework within which these discussions should take place, in my opinion, is a review of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT) Act. The status of the current review of the JNHT Act is unclear. My recollection is of a November 2009 document published by the JNHT, Jamaica National Heritage Trust Act – A Review. It was published to guide discussions on proposed amendments to the Act, which aims to modernise and strengthen heritage protection in Jamaica.

I am hereby calling on the JNHT’s board of directors to consider a new category in the Act which would result in a re-listing of lost historic sites that would function as “Sites of Memory”. This would mean they would never be forgotten. The option to de-list the historic town of Black River and other sites destroyed by Hurricane Melissa from the JNHT’s lists of national monuments would mean that Melissa has won. Can Jamaica allow this?

Joan Francis

Museum and heritage preservation officer

Lecturer, archival appraisal and access

University of Technology, Jamaica