It seems as if hell has opened up in the Caribbean region. The weather events in the Caribbean and Central America just keeps getting ‘stranger and stranger’. All Caribbean nations know the power of a hurricane, Bahamians, Jamaicans, Dominica and Antigua know all about them first hand.
But now we are having earthquakes more frequently. In addition, the La Soufriere volcano on the St Vincent and the Grenadines has decided to blow its stack. Well, decided to bubble its stack as the eruption is effusive and not explosive. Nevertheless that volcano has not made a peep since, 1979, but now in the worse several months in world history, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it decides its time as if worrying about getting sick and dying wasn’t bad enough!
Is God just tired of us? I would not go that far as he says his love is everlasting and he would never put more on us than we can manage. This is simply just the season for these things to happen. God will see you through his season, however. I can assure you of that.
Needless to say, this brings to mind the regional safety mechanisms for things like this. It saddened me when in 2018 hurricane Maria destroyed Dominica- which they are rebuilding quite nicely afterwards, I must say- and left the island with little or next to nothing. It was like a nuclear blast had hit the island. However, there was no regional mechanism to ensure people were evacuated and put into a shelter, considering most of us are at risk at any given year for the devastation that happened on Dominica.
The Bahamas found out in 2019 with hurricane Dorian that it can happen to you too. Dorian killed Abaco. Literally. Abaco has not rebuilt yet and there is virtually still no commerce and people are still trying to rebuild their homes.
Central American just went through hurricanes Eta and Iota this last season, 2020. The pictures are heart wrenching, but where do they turn?
In case of Dominica, they had nowhere to go. Trinidad tried to step up, but one country on their own initiative is not enough. In the case of The Bahamas, they have over seven hundred island and cays, most of the uninhabited and the larger ones that are habited, outside of the capital island of New Providence, has “adequate” infrastructure to take on new residents.
But, in reality, single island states or even dual island states have nowhere to go and no way to properly evacuate aside from individual state led emergency plans.
This is not enough. We are too isolated as a region made up of a group of former slaves, most of which either share England or Spain as a former colonizer.
Something must be done!