Omar gives coastal residents wakeup call

By VonDez Phipps
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE high winds and surging seas brought along by Hurricane Omar hammered various coastal areas on St. Kitts, particularly those in the rural areas from Old Road to Sandy Point.

Although Omar had passed but 100 miles north of the island, hundreds of properties were damaged, roads broken and the coastline left bare beyond recognition. Old Road Bay was, for the most part, destroyed by the sea; tall trees blocked the road and large boulders tumbled from the hill onto the roadway.

Thousands of residents from all over the island walked for miles in large groups from as early as 5:30 a.m. to provide assistance to those coastline residents who had received the hardest blow from Omar. Many helped the elderly and feeble to get to a safe place while others joined hands to clear the roads of logs and trunks that had blocked access through the coastal villages.

One affected woman told SKNVibes, “Although we did not even get the full strength from the hurricane, it still caused a lot of damage. The sea rose up, took off my door, came in and went with every single thing! I had to leave my house and get shelter at a neighbour’s.”

Another woman, traumatised by the effects of Omar claimed that “this is a warning to us; this is a wake-up call. We can’t continue living the same. It’s time to change the way we live!”  ~~Adz:Right~~

Parliamentary Representative for the area, the Hon. Rupert Herbert went out to make his rounds to observe how badly his constituency was battered. He told SKNVibes that he felt bad how things happened, but added that it is just something that had to be accepted.

“Well, the truth is that it is nothing new for us in the area, because we have faced Hurricane Lenny before. Unfortunately, many houses were destroyed by the water. But people need to see the danger in living so close to the sea…and so, action has to be taken in order to reduce and even eliminate the possibility of damage by sea.

“There has been a lot of corrective work done by the government to protect the area. For example, the revetments placed across Old Road Bay and New Guinea, and if they were not there, the damage would have certainly been much greater. One would have only hoped that we didn’t get a hurricane so soon.”

Minister Herbert further informed that moving residents who live very close to the sea would definitely be a topic for discussion and promised that once the water recedes, the work will begin on Old Road Bay to get the area back to normal.

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