Making sense of the recent disasters

In the recent past, we have watched, courtesy the medium of the television, incredible scenes of disaster in virtually every area of the globe, Haiti and Japan being among the more recent ones. They were often far away, but yet ever so near, as we looked at the scenes in our living rooms. For a long time, we had been spared any major disaster, but last year Tomas struck, and now in what should have been the dry season, another disaster normally associated with the rainy period has hit us.{{more}} It has been largely localised in some areas of the North East but obviously has implications for the whole country. Not only have some of our relatives and friends been affected, but it also means having to divert scarce national resources to the area. These are in some ways wake up calls for us. We had been spared any major hurricane for a very long time. Tomas would, however, remind us that we have always to be on the alert and not think that we are specially favoured. Tomas was not a major hurricane and we did not receive the full brunt of its blast. Now out of the blue came the disaster of the evening of Monday April 11, catching all of us by surprise.

The logs and debris brought down by the rivers should force us to focus on what is happening in the interior. There were claims that the logs and tree trunks brought down were left from Tomas, but surely it must be more than that. Are we still indiscriminately cutting trees in the forest? What other activities are taking place in our interior that impact negatively on our environment? The way we treat the environment even in the habitable areas might give us an indication of what is happening in those other areas not populated but frequented. It is clear to me that despite efforts to increase our consciousness about the importance of protecting our environment, we lack environmental awareness, and in any event tend to pay lip service to such matters.

Surely we will get assistance to do the necessary repairs. This is all right when it applies to the repair of bridges, roads and pipelines, but there are people whose lives will not be the same again, given the damage to their homes and belongings, and the horrors which they experienced. It means, too, that human resources will also have to be diverted to attend to the urgent needs in the area. But a number of other questions have to be asked, particularly when we look at the damage to bridges and other kinds of physical infrastructure. Some of these bridges have been around for quite a long time. Have we been regularly monitoring the integrity of our physical infrastructure or do we wait until a disaster happens to begin that process? Usually when we thought of natural disasters, our focus had been on the La Soufriere volcano and the annual hurricane season, but what happened early last week must cause us to rethink a number of other things.

All of this has to be put in the context of the issue of climate change. There should be no doubt in our minds that the weather pattern has been changing. It is difficult now to know when the rainy or dry season starts or ends. There has really been no dry season so far this year. Let us hope that it doesn’t occur in what should be the rainy season. Even the fruits and vegetables seem to have become confused and are themselves behaving strangely, based on this. As young school boys playing cricket and football, it was easy for us to predict when rain was going to come. Depending on where we were, we simply looked at ‘Penny Hole’ and knew without doubt what was going to happen. There were two distinct cricket and football seasons, based on the traditional weather patterns. Now all of this is not very clear. Quite often on a day that appears perfectly clear, with hardly a cloud in the sky, it rains. So we are all confused. The argument about the change in the weather pattern puts the responsibility for that on man’s relationship with the environment, where he has to a large extent been upsetting what some regard as nature’s delicate balance.

There are other things we have to begin to look at. In the olden days, one’s political affiliation mattered little. We were all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We looked after each other. Following Tomas, there were many who proudly displayed their party gadgets, expecting that it would mean priority in addressing needs resulting from Tomas or getting assistance even when they were not affected. Some of those relief supplies that were given to people not affected by last year’s hurricane are now badly needed to deal with a disaster that is probably larger than that created by Tomas. In situations like these, we cannot simply sit down and wait on governments or on the authorities. Help is often needed urgently, and we have to act immediately to assist people in our communities, whether it is getting people out of homes in which they had been trapped by the raging waters or providing temporary shelter for them. I hope that on such occasions we realise how stupid are the political divisions that we have been creating.

We have to respond to disasters and to rebuild, but unless we learn the lessons that they offer, then we will be no better off. We have always got to be prepared and to be conscious of our environment and how to deal with it, but we have to maintain the traditional relationships and realise that we depend on each other, particularly because we have no control over some of these acts of nature as we call them, but which are fuelled by our own man made activities. We cannot control a number of these things but we could lessen the negative impact by our understanding and by the way we deal with the environment. I strongly agree with Searchlight’s editorial of last week that “We are in no position to prevent rains, floods, winds etc., but we can, and must play our part in avoiding the worst effects.” We must take warning!

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian.