You would think dat the people up in the United States who build dem nice-looking houses and know dat dem gine be living in the high-risk areas would build dem more sturdy, out o’ a different type o’ material or even put certain conditions fuh building in place so as tuh withstand certain natural or other disasters.
You would think dat if they know dat dem gine build a house in what we does call the hurricane belt, like the Carolinas and certain parts o’ Florida; or the tornado belt like up in the Midwest like Nebraska or Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and dem kinda places so, they would be more solid.
Ya might also want tuh build up in California, where duh does have earthquakes and a whole lot o’ bush fires, dat people would build tuh suit these kinda disasters and not up in dem forests. I ain’t talking ’bout the fires suhmuch, ’cause dem does cah way evahthing, wood or wall. But I cahn understand if these people ain’t realize yet what duh facing year in and year out up tuh now.
I love tuh watch the news and whenever I sit down and watch the aftermath of a tornado – or twister, as they call dem – I does be in awe. Look, the houses does be reduced tuh bare rubble wid splinters and what seems like li’l ends o’ wood pelt all over the place like a bundle o’ match sticks.
You would never believe dat it does be people houses you looking at.
And still these people would go and build back in the same areas, wid the same type o’ materials: bare wood.
I ain’t gine tell you nuh lie. I love travelling and I would love tuh see some o’ the Midwestern states, but when I see dat dem states like duh right in the path of the tornadoes, I does shiver. It look like the people in dem places always got tuh be pon duh Ps and Qs, boh. It look like dem always have tuh be ready in or out o’ the house fuh when a tornado gine decide tuh touch down; and when it happens, the possibility exists dat dem might find their nice house as only a pile o’ wood and rubbish li’l ways down the road.
Sometimes I does ask myself, how come dem doan build like we in the Caribbean, wid concrete blocks and steel? Look, before you could say Jack Robinson, dem houses does be back up in the air – and outta wood again.
It is the same thing wid the people in Florida and the Carolinas, ya know? Whenevah a system comes off the African coast, builds up in the Atlantic Ocean and threaten tuh flatten all the islands o’ the Caribbean, we does be praying of course, but most o’ we does feel fairly comfortable, knowing dat because of certain building standards ya gotta maintain, especially nowadays wid roofs and wooden houses, most o’ we would just get off wid the galvanize palings gone flying somewhere; part o’ the roof might also go, depending on how old the house is.
We might even get damage from trees falling down pon houses or power lines or a few people might even lose their wooden houses only because they might not have been too strong from the beginning. But ya doan see a whole street o’ houses crumbling.
There’s a programme I like tuh watch. It is called Extreme Makeover. The last programme was with a woman who, when the tornado hit, lie down on her two little sons and ended up with a broken back. She is now in a wheel chair as a result.
So the team from Extreme Makeover came in to give the family back a beautiful, more comfortable home.
It normally happens in seven days, hear?
And you would know that it was completely out of wood.
But look, the house, like all the other houses they build on dat programme, was gorgeous and it looked like the only concrete dat went into dat house was the foundation and I think it was built pon the same spot too.
I ain’t understand dat, neither do I like it, but dat is how they build their houses. I see the same thing happening in Canada a few years ago when a friend o’ mine was buying one in a up-market development and all the frames o’ the houses was outta wood. But leh me tell you something, when dat house was done, it was a beauty – ya wanted tuh live in it. It was perfect, only outta wood wid some red bricks in parts of it.
It is just a facade.
Dem houses, despite how beautiful they might appear, cahn mark fat pon we houses ’bout here.
