PAROTTEE, St Elizabeth — Recounting how her then four-year-old grandson had to be stuffed inside a fridge as refuge from Hurricane Melissa seven months ago, 81-year-old Beautina Roach is among the residents of Parottee who are not taking any chances this hurricane season.

“The water came to the window height and everything washed out of the house. We can’t stay here. When the sea came over you could just walk and pick up all kinds of fish…We had to put this little one [boy] in a fridge,” she said while pointing to her now five-year-old grandson last Friday.

A short distance from Roach’s house, Dahlia Graham recounted leaving Parottee with her spouse and five children ages 10, eight, seven, six, and five, two days before the Category Five storm made landfall last October, and sought shelter at Newell High School.

“When I came home everything was flat. The only thing I saved was my pig. We lost furniture, house, clothes, everything. We had to just restart. We have the structure, but most of what we lost inside we haven’t replaced yet. We just have to take our little time, and we just got electricity back,” she said.

Although hopeful that devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa is not repeated this year, Graham is still fearful.

“If we are here for a time and we see that it is going to get worse, then we have to just move. We can’t live carelessly. We have children. We can’t just have them like that and danger coming and say we are going to stay. Anything that is coming to hurt, we are not staying, we are moving,” she added.

For Parottee fisherman Orville “Ruddy” Williams, he doesn’t intend to ride out any storm in the seaside community ever again.

“If hurricane comes again I am not going to let it catch me on the beach. I am going to find some higher ground or some hill, because if this [storm] did come to kill, no one would be left here, especially on the beach front,” he said.

“I am looking for the safest place this time around,” he added.

In contrast to Williams and Graham, another resident, Puncie Bennett Munroe, is adamant that she will not leave Parottee and wants to rebuild her house.

“If another hurricane comes like [Melissa], a dead we ago dead. I have my house how much years and it never pull down. Beryl came and nothing happened, but Melissa mash it up. All of my goats drowned,” she said.

“Is right here so I have to stay. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Is a house I want to build. I am not leaving Parottee to go anywhere else. Is my father dead leave the land give me here, and I pay taxes for it. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The Jamaican flag standing tall in Parottee, St Elizabeth last Friday. Garfield Robinson

Parottee fisherman Orville “Ruddy” Williams speaking with the Jamaica Observer last Friday. Kasey Williams