Dawn RitchTHERE IS no greater dread that a human being can feel than waiting for a natural disaster to occur. So it was with Hurricane Ivan.
The Most Honourable P.J. Patterson did us no favours by making two national broadcasts on the subject in as many days. The captain of the ship was so terrified that the whites of his eyes showed all around, and he could barely get his words out. It was not a calming spectacle and certainly one we could have all done without, at a time of consuming panic.
INACCURATE REPORTS
His Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, was no better. In a live interview on Radio Jamaica, he said that there were heavily armed gangs of men on the streets "gathering to loot". Poor policewoman Ionie Ramsay then had to spend most of the rest of the day correcting inaccurate reports of looting going on, some of which incidents were reported to the news stations by people who claimed actually to have seen them. We could all have been better served if these gentlemen had taken to their beds and left the crisis to professionals.
The turmoil was more than sufficient without them adding to it.
The declaration of a national state of emergency must surely be the high point of the Most Honourable's panic. He said he did so according to our Constitution, but I doubt it. Our Constitution provides for a State of Emergency after an event like a hurricane, earthquake or war, not before one. At the time the Prime Minister declared it, Hurricane Ivan was 100 miles from Jamaica.
Over half a million people on low-lying areas of the south coast were grandly told by our elected officials to evacuate to identified shelters. One can hardly blame mothers when they turned up at the shelters without bringing so much as milk for their babies. The confident tone of the announcements might have suggested that steaming pots of soup as well as baby's formula would have been on hand.
PROFESSIONALS
When people run for their lives they don't think clearly. Our elected officials once again had to be helped by professionals doing their jobs well. Presenters on electronic media immediately jumped on the problem by reminding mothers to run with the baby and the milk.
The charge could be levelled that this experience shows the essential weakness of our society. Our people are no longer educated properly and they don't reason well. It was reported on RJR that Jamaica Labour Party Member of Parliament, James Robertson, said that a man in St. Thomas took his 27" black, flat screen TV to the shelter. This boggles my imagination! The man could have drowned anywhere along the roadside with the TV. Or the TV could have dragged him into a raging river! I was unable to ask James if the man with the TV took anything else to the shelter like food, clothes or maybe a child or two. Or was the woman carrying both children on her back as usual? If there was a woman involved, or children or even a dog. But the TV ranks as a classic, along with the mothers who refused to use their personal initiative and take their baby's milk with them to the shelters. I guess they took their wigs in plastic bags instead.
It was left to Stacey-Ann Smith on TVJ to ask the 500,000 people who had been told to evacuate to a shelter, to take food, dry clothes and to put their important papers in plastic bags and take them too. The Most Honourable had given two whole nationwide broadcasts, yet the people were left to wander in the dark like blind sheep. I was in downtown Kingston on the morning of the hurricane. It was shocking to see tree limbs cut off and left where they fell and the garbage uncollected. Officials remembered the power lines late and left the branches cut from the trees as missiles to be used in the breeze against the poor. This is a deeply cynical administration. The garbage was left so that those who survived the ordeal of Hurricane Ivan could stink in unnecessary filth. And that's just the streets.
TRAGIC STORY
We already know the tragic story of the nation's drains and gullies and the continuous saga of who is to maintain them and when. The fact remains, however, that people are expected to use some little initiative in an emergency. The people who I saw that morning were just milling around the branches hoping that a truck would come. Preferably with sidemen on board. The baby without milk and the huge flat screen TV are blinding examples of the obvious. The man, assuming any logic at all to his actions, must have expected a stand-by generator at the shelter. The mothers were also sure that the shelter would have soy and whole milk.
COMMON SENSE
If the Reggae Boyz can get US$1,000 each for drawing a football match as distinct from winning one, why shouldn't an evacuee expect a cup of soup and milk for a lactose intolerant child? Hell, why not a stand-by generator? It exposes how shamelessly the people have come to rely on the politician, not only for preferment, but their necessities. So much so that in a flood emergency they refuse to use even their fleeting common sense.
A state of emergency should only be called when there is damage or looting. For the Government to assume that one is necessary now, is to believe that the Jamaican people will do both or either, following the hurricane. This is a deeply cynical assumption and one that I don't believe that we deserve. When a Government can panic like this, it's a wonder that they don't bolt!
