As the search continued in St Vincent for missing people gobbled up a day earlier by flash floods, authorities in St Lucia reported a slow by steady return of services to that island.
While St Vincent declared a “level two” disaster ahead of the return of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves from an overseas trip, authorities identified “Vermont Valley all the way down to Buccament Bay; Spring Village, Rose Bank and Dark View on the Leeward Side; South Rivers; O’Briens Valley, Spring Village-Georgetown” as disaster areas.
In the early afternoon yesterday, search and rescue personnel were reportedly looking for two people, after reportedly recovering another two that brought to nine the number of confirmed deaths after the mountainous island was battered by heavy rains and strong winds on Christmas Eve and early Christmas Day.
At the same time the country’s National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) reported that several communities were still cut off by landslides that blocked roads and rushing waters that damaged bridges. About that time authorities said they expected that by nighfall most customers would have been reconnected to the national power grid, but it would be well into the weekend before running water was restored to the 50 per cent of the country that lost the service when the floods came.
The latest “situation report” from NEMO yesterday also reported five people injured with 62 homeless and being accommodated in shelters. Nine houses were reported destroyed and 15 damaged.
Meanwhile, St Lucia’s civil aviation authorities gave the go-head for the reopening of the Hewanorra International Airport after it was closed by a deluge of water and mud, even as airport officials confirmed that a Virgin Atlantic plane with 40 passengers on board was damaged when it came into contact with debris on the runway immediately after landing on Christmas Eve.
The St Lucia Electricity Services Limited said that it had been able to restore power to “nearly all areas that had been affected by outages resulting from the heavy rains and severe lightning”.
In a true show of Caribbean spirit, Dominica, which also took a battering from the weather system, reported yesterday that it was prepared to assist St Lucia and St Vincent to the best of its ability.
After announcing that Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit was cutting short an overseas trip to return home and lead the recover effort, Acting Prime Minister Reginald Austrie said in a national broadcast:
“Here in Dominica we are still in fact monitoring the impact that this system has had on [us] . . . [but] any activity that will have any impact on the economies of our sister nations we should be very concerned about.”
Yesterday, Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza expressed “sincere condolences” to the governments and the peoples of the affected countries on their loss and assured them that the Washington-based hemispheric body “stands in solidarity with them at this very difficult time”.(RRM)
