Toxic encounters
Black River’s mayor has Melissa on his mind with Beryl recovery still ongoing
Published:Monday | October 27, 2025 | 12:06 AMAdrian Frater/Gleaner Writer
Western Bureau:
Memories of last year’s devastating blow by Hurricane Beryl are still fresh, especially the major infrastructural damage, the multimillion-dollar hit on the farming section, and several months without electricity. Black River Mayor Richard Solomon is worried that a similar impact from Hurricane Melissa could mean a fresh bout of misery for St Elizabeth, especially among those residents who have still not yet recovered.
“We were one of the parishes hardest hit the last time around, so, as a result of that, we would have put those lessons that we learnt into practice to improve, so that, hopefully, we won’t have to experience anything worse than Beryl,” said Solomon, who was on the ground in the parish on Friday overseeing preparations.
According to Solomon, armed with the experience from last year, a committee comprised of all the critical stakeholders was recently assembled to plan a comprehensive response should the impending weather system impact the parish.
“We had a meeting on Tuesday, where we got a state of readiness from all the agencies. I am happy to report that based on the feedback from all the critical agencies, such as Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Health, the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) and the National Works Agency (NWA), all those critical agencies gave us positive feedback in terms of their state of readiness.
“As a corporation, we have the responsibility of coordinating all these activities. We are basically monitoring things now, our shelters have been all inspected; mark you, we are having a little challenge with one or two, especially in Flagaman, it is a little bit of distance away from the citizens to reach to the shelter that we identified,” said Solomon, “We would have explored all the shelters within that region, but unfortunately, we are still picking up the pieces from Beryl.”
According to Solomon, some of the churches they have reached out to say they were not equipped to function as shelters, and the St Elizabeth Health Department indicated that its facility is earmarked to be used as a command centre.
NO ALTERNATIVE
“As a result, we are left with no alternative but to use what we have at this point in time,” said Solomon, who noted that the parish’s disaster coordinator has compiled a listing of shelters that could be used if needed.
“Nonetheless, for the future, we will have to see how best we can restore that centre (the community centre in Flagaman) because it is critical.”
“There is arrangement for persons to move to that shelter that is provided. The citizens would have been made aware of it. What we are prepared to do is to provide transportation to assist those persons to the shelter we would have identified,” he added.
As it relates to some residents of the Parottee district, who are claiming that their situation remains dire from last year, as they are yet to get any assistance after their terrible experience with Hurricane Beryl, Solomon described that situation as unfortunate.
“That is a bit unfortunate. We would have collaborated with the humanitarian aspect of the committee, which would have done the assessment. We would have reached out to areas of Parottee, and I am sure that persons would have benefited. However based on the demand, scale, and magnitude, I can’t say that every single person would have gotten the support and assistance; but I am sure that support was given to that area,” said Solomon.
With some residents still unhappy about the almost four months it took the JPS to fully restore electricity to the parish after Hurricane Beryl, Solomon said based on the discussions with the utility company and the work they have done to improve their network in the parish since last year, he believes there won’t be a repeat of the horror of last year.
POSITIVE REPORT FROM JPS
“I am happy to report that JPS is a part of our command centre, they were a part of our disaster emergency committee that we had on Tuesday, and they gave us a report which would have given us a little comfort,” said Solomon. “We would have seen some work that was done in terms of vegetation management – removing a lot of heavy over-hangings that are visible – that they would have done, and the fact that communication is now improved… . I think we are at a better place where JPS is concerned.”
With St Elizabeth experiencing significant rainfall in recent times and the parish basically saturated, Solomon believes an extended period of rainfall could make the situation challenging for the JPS crew, but he still believes they will be able to respond much more quickly than last year.
“The area is sort of saturated, and with whatever we are going to experience, we can’t guarantee that we are not going to experience some discomfort in terms of outages as was indicated by JPS, but nonetheless, they indicated that they will be mobilising their team to respond as quickly as possible; they would have also gotten assistance from overseas to improve on their fleet,” said Solomon. “So, I want to think that we are at a better place. They would have learnt a lot, we would have collaborated with them, and I think moving forward, we should see a better outcome notwithstanding the magnitude of this system.”
In looking back at the Beryl experience, Solomon said one of the most challenging episodes was the whole matter of communication and collaborating with some of the critical agencies to get a rapid, early response.
“JPS would have been one, NWA would have been another agency who would have responded; but because of the breakdown with the telecommunication system, it did pose a problem with logistics. It was hard to coordinate some of the activities, but, nonetheless, we overcame and that is why we are trying to improve communication this time around by using the radios provided by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management.”
Having done all the possible preparations, Solomon said the onus is now on resident to play their part in ensuring that they don’t act recklessly to expose themselves to unnecessary danger.
“When it comes on to life and property, I have to ask them to be responsible, because it is going to be difficult for us to bring any sort of rescue if persons get marooned in that area, and I am personally appealing to them as their mayor to do the necessaries from now,” he said. “If they have to evacuate, please do so from now, because based on all the indications (about) the system that is coming, I think we are going to be hit hard, and I am encouraging persons to assess their situation carefully and have an evacuation plan if there is a need to do so.”