Survivors navigate hellish aftermath in Black River

Devastation, desperation, and the acrid stench of death and despair – that was Black River, the capital of St Elizabeth, two days after Hurricane Melissa’s rampage.

The scene was apocalyptic. Buildings lay in heaps of rubble, vehicles were overturned and mangled, and sand and debris blanketed the streets. Trees and light poles stood frozen, tilted in the direction of the wind that broke them.

The roads were thick with mud, reeking of sewage and rotting meat. Dust and sand filled the air, stinging eyes and skin, and making passage nearly impossible. Amid the ruin moved the people – survivors whose lives Hurricane Melissa had altered forever.

Beyond the din of motorbikes and the chaos of looters raiding shops for food and supplies, came sounds more haunting: babies crying in the stifling heat, like one-year-old Asari Williams; an elderly woman gasping weakly after collapsing on the muddy floor of the Black River Police Station; and, above it all, the rhythmic chop of a helicopter’s blades slicing the sky – as if warning of the perilous conditions below.

From the air, its occupants saw only mud and mayhem: hundreds of filthy, desperate people swarming wholesale stores, scavenging anything they could find. Some looted wrecked buildings; others made new entrances through shattered roofs.

Some of what they took – like damp cigarettes – was useless. But for others, like Maxine Edwards, who had lost everything after weathering the storm with her two daughters, young Asari, and his cousin, two-year-old Amelia Samms, beneath a bed frame as their home in Brompton disintegrated around them, every item mattered.

“I experienced something that I wouldn’t want my enemy to experience. All five of us were under the bed bottom. I had to wrap up the baby in a sheet and towel, and even those were soaked,” said Reneice Smith, explaining how she protected the child from splinters, and two sheets of zing that flew “bird speed” toward them.

“It’s a good thing it didn’t fly under the bed or it would have chopped us up,” she told The Sunday Gleaner.

Crocodile-infested roads

Black River had been cut off for days. Yet, word spread quickly, and people from nearby districts – even as far as Clarendon – trudged or pushed motorbikes through flooded, crocodile-infested roads to reach the loot.

Crane Road, once lined with beautiful villas, was now a wasteland and the easiest route. Along it, residents spread their few surviving clothes on the rubble to dry.

At Brucefield Gospel Chapel, Pastor Sherman Hall stood beneath the open sky, hands raised as he surveyed what was left of his church.

“No service this Sunday,” he joked.

Back in the heart of the town, chaos reigned. The few police officers still stationed there could only look on, it seemed, just ensuring there was no violence.

There was not much else they could do, one admitted.

The police station itself was a murky graveyard – service vehicles waterlogged, and officers exhausted after nearly a week without contact with their families.

Two relatives were even arrested after fighting over loot. They were later released with a stern warning. With more than 60 inmates in lock-up, all of whom had to be fed and cared for by the cops, there was nowhere to put them, admitted Divisional Commander, Superintendent Coleridge Minto.

He admitted he had more important tasks than the two, for whose release, a female pleaded with cops. They were fathers, and their kids were homeless and hungry, she bawled.

Inside Minto’s mud-soaked office, Dr Macey Hall, still working despite the destruction of Black River Hospital, fought to save the life of a woman who had collapsed outside. She succeeded. The patient was later transferred to hospital.

50-year-old generator

Then, to Minto’s dismay, the 50-year-old generator providing the station with the only electricity in the town, suddenly died, taking with it the Starlink system – the only connection between Minto and help in Kingston. Smoke curled from the engine as he weighed his options in the fading light.

“It has been a really rough time. I’ve been here five days now, and just before you came, I almost came to tears in my office ... ,” said Minto, his comments and grief interrupted by a Black River Hospital representative requesting police escort for ambulances with the last set of patients from the hospital.

But Minto could not assist. He had no vehicles. And the hospital representative exited the station reluctantly. As he did, news came of a sudden death in a neighbouring community.

It wasn’t until nightfall on Thursday that the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) finally broke through the wreckage and reached Black River. Until then, Minto sent officers to that scene as others monitored the chaos unfolding outside the station doors.

As the sun set, the devastation became even harder to bear. Pedestrians turned to silhouettes against the blackness, as did the crumbling remains of the St John’s Anglican Church, the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation building, and the Black River Hospital. Craters in the roadway disappeared beneath the shadows, and friend or foe became impossible to tell apart.

Now, with JDF soldiers patrolling the streets – rifles glinting under the pale moonlight – the rush was on finding a way home – or to what’s left of it. Roadways in and out of the town were blocked, and traffic was at a snarl as vehicles got stuck in the sand dunes, creating other problems.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com