Herbert Thomas (right), Director of Resource Management at the Water Resources Authority explains the scientific reasons for flooding in St. Elizabeth at a press conference at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), Camp Road yesterday. At left are Director-General of ODPEM Dr. Barbara Carby, and Deputy Director-General Paul Saunders. - Norman Grindley /Staff Photographer EFFORTS TO get persons displaced by the recent flood rains back on their feet will be ongoing for the next two to four weeks as the Government seeks to find alternative accommodation for those who lost their homes.
In the meantime the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) and the disaster team are now registering and doing damage assessment of the displaced who should receive rehabilitation grants as needed as soon as possible.
ODPEM, which has been provided with $15 million for immediate assistance from the Government, is now providing bedding and other essentials as well as material to help clean out homes. The agency is also carrying food items to persons still cut off by rising waters and debris resulting from flood rains associated with Tropical Storm Lili. Some areas in Hanover and St. Thomas are still inaccessible and are being provided with airlifted supplies. Another disaster meeting next week will look at further funding on the basis of damage assessment reports, Dr. Barbara Carby, ODPEM Director-General, said yesterday.
ODPEM representatives said that water was still rising in Newmarket and New River in St. Elizabeth where persons are sheltering within the community itself. In Hanover, Pierces Village and Forest have been cut off by rising water. The parish disaster committees have been able to get supplies in to some 50 families in Hanover. The situation will have to be monitored over the next several weeks, ODPEM said.
"If the water continues to rise, they (Newmarket) will have to evacuate," Dr. Carby said at a press conference at ODPEM, Camp Road. "There is still foot access into New River, so we have managed to get some food in there, but we do not know how long that access will be available to us."
ODPEM said that 475 persons still remain in shelters, the majority in Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Elizabeth who are expected to remain sheltered weeks after ODPEM clears out the remaining shelters. One hundred and forty-eight persons are still in shelters in St. Elizabeth, 223 in Kingston and St. Andrew, 40 in St. Thomas, 31 in Claren-don and 33 in Westmoreland.
Yesterday was also the United Nations' International Day for Disaster Reduction and Dr. Carby said that the disaster management community globally have realised that disaster prevention is far more important in reducing the economic impact of disasters on a country than are response and relief.
She said that, for example in 1979 in Newmarket, the then Government of Jamaica relocated the residents just as was done in Swift River, St. Thomas in the 1930s.
"What happens is that residents have gone back into the high-risk areas, so we keep having to respond; it's an issue that has to be developed at policy level," she said. "The return period for the inundation of Newmarket is 13 years on average, that means that within a normal person's lifetime they will experience maybe four or five events of this nature."
Earlier, Herbert Thomas, director of resource management at the Water Resources Authority explained that in 1979 water stayed in the Newmarket area for nine months and levels rose to 1,168.6 feet with 33.8 inches of rainfall from June 10 to July 25. Five hundred and seventy acres were flooded and 24 houses covered. The 2002 floods, he said, had saturated soil from Tropical Storm Isidore added to 12.55 inches of rainfall from Lili. Here, the water level rose from 1,075 ft to 1,155 ft above average sea level. Though the rate is now decreasing, it's still rising at about a foot per day. In the Newmarket basin, he explained, the limestone doesn't allow for easy movement of water through it and the soil on top doesn't drain readily.
He said that the preliminary forecast is that the water level will rise to the 1979 levels in 27 days and if these levels are attained it will take about nine months for the water to recede.
