The past in ruins

The savage winds of Hurricane Melissa did not just strip roofs and flatten homes; they obliterated or damaged about 40 heritage structures that anchor Jamaican identity, memory and national spirit.

That figure is expected to rise once privately owned properties are assessed, according to the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT), the state body responsible for preserving national monuments.

The trust has not yet released the full list of affected public buildings or the estimated repair costs.

When Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica on October 28, it left a staggering human and material toll: at least 45 dead, more than 300,000 Jamaicans affected, over 190,000 buildings damaged, and more than $1 trillion in losses, according to the government’s preliminary estimates.

Among the sites that lie in ruin are the physical anchors of history and memory across several western parishes.

The trust said “a significant portion” of the 320 declared national monuments and protected heritage sites are in the parishes hardest hit by Melissa: St Elizabeth, Trelawny, St James, Westmoreland, and Hanover.

Two of Jamaica’s five designated historic districts – Black River and Falmouth – are among the worst affected, the trust says, with Black River described as “the worst.”

In both towns, a 13-foot storm surge and winds of 185 miles per hour, from the most powerful storm to hit Jamaica, peeled roofs from centuries-old structures, split timber frames, and crumbled stonework, stripping community squares of architecture that once made them living museums.

Black River, the first town in Jamaica to receive electricity, holds deep industrial and cultural history. The JNHT notes that its electric power originally came from a massive furnace-and-boiler plant that used logwood, then a major export of St Elizabeth, to generate steam.

Much of that legacy now lies in ruins – prompting Prime Minister Andrew Holness to declare, “It is going to be a massive task to rebuild Black River, this historic town.”

“But while it is destroyed, we can vision a future of it rising stronger and better, because the truth is that many of the buildings were not properly located in the first place. They were in vulnerable areas,” he added on October 29, a day after the storm flattened many slavery and colonial-era structures.

For historians, the loss is profound. Marcia Thomas, a member of the Jamaica Historical Society and Built Heritage Jamaica, lamented the destruction in Black River.

“The shock, for me, was the collapse of the seemingly sturdy 188-year-old brick-built St John’s Anglican Parish Church. Only the bell tower seems to be standing. The famous Waterloo House is gone, known as one of the first places in Jamaica to use electricity,” she wrote in a recent Gleaner article.

While much of Black River crumbled, the monument to the Zong Massacre remained standing. The memorial honours the more than 130 enslaved Africans thrown overboard the British ship Zong in 1781 so the crew could claim insurance; the vessel later docked in Black River.

The town, because of its port, was vital to the slave trade. Enslaved persons were brought there and sold at auctions.

Falmouth – long regarded as the best-preserved Georgian town in the Caribbean – suffered devastating architectural blows. Key buildings in the historic square, including the municipal building and the St Peter’s Anglican Parish Church, completed in 1795 and considered the oldest public building in the town, were severely damaged.

The Georgian-era Falmouth Courthouse, first constructed in 1815 and reconstructed following a 1926 fire, sustained damage during Hurricane Melissa.

Civic, educational

and social meaning

For many Jamaicans, the damage to the historical sites is not measured only as architectural devastation but as the erasure of places that held civic, educational and social meaning. St Elizabeth resident Mavis Martin said the destruction of the Cambridge United Church’s organ and furniture was heartbreaking.

One of the hardest-hit property owners is the Anglican Church in Jamaica. Its head, Bishop Leon Golding, described the losses as “catastrophic” as teams continue tallying the damage. Many churches, he noted, date from the 1600s and 1700s and contain “irreplaceable furnishings and memorials.”

Golding said the churches, many of which were key in colonial local government administration, are vulnerable to the high winds as many of them had old roofs of timber or slate, and were situated in exposed areas such as on hills.

But the church is a community beyond its buildings and that worship and ministry will continue even as rebuilding begins, Golding said.

“We can rebuild again, and the church will survive as it has done over the centuries,” he told The Sunday Gleaner. “Hard as it might seem, the priority now is not to restore these buildings, but to help persons in the communities who have suffered the loss of their homes, possessions, and livelihoods.”Chief Richard Currie, leader of the Accompong Maroons in St Elizabeth, said the storm hit the cultural and spiritual core of his people, damaging more than 80 per cent of homes and scarring sacred spaces.

“And what we have also had is damage to the community centre, which houses the museum,” he said.

“In the museum are several artefacts, parts of our history and our legacy have been destroyed … Kindah Tree is our sacred gathering spot … it has been partially destroyed, but still standing,” he said.

Kindah Tree is the site for signing the 1739 treaty with the British.

Meanwhile, Dr Julian Cresser, head of the Department of History and Archaeology at The University of the West Indies, Mona, says Jamaica’s heritage extends beyond bricks and mortar and includes practices, rituals and community memory. He said disruption of access to these places may fracture the transmission of those traditions.

Permanent loss of knowledge

“This is a great concern because in Jamaica we already have a hard enough task of getting the wider population to fully appreciate these things. This disconnection could mean a permanent loss of knowledge, tradition and values,” he said.

“Our heritage, built and intangible, act as important symbols that help to reinforce this identity. They are part of our collective memory as a people and this is important because our will to bounce back is empowered by this ability as a people to recall the many times we’ve done it before.”

But Cresser said the situation “is not all bleak,” pointing to older buildings that have withstood severe storms and the lessons they offer in durable construction and resilience.

“Preserving heritage is always important, but in times of crisis it takes on a special importance because these heritage sites and expressions are symbols of our shared identity and help to reinforce social cohesion, which is crucial – because the other side of disaster response is people becoming desperate and acting in an every-person-for-themselves way,” he added.

After surveying the destruction in Falmouth, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie signalled the start of a difficult national discussion.

“When I saw the infirmary in Falmouth, tears came to my eyes. There’s no way that that infirmary can go back to that location,” he said Tuesday, adding that he would be engaging the minister of culture because of Falmouth’s protected status. “We have to come to the realisation that Melissa has given us a different light on how we operate”

The prime minister has also questioned whether certain towns should be rebuilt in their existing coastal locations, stressing the need to review where and how Jamaicans settle in the face of intensifying storms.

The JNHT says it has begun documentation and intends to expand digital preservation – including 3D scanning and archival surveys – and to erect interpretive storyboards where sites are too damaged to restore.

On insurance, the JNHT said most sites it manages are insured. The situation with private owners is not clear but the trust said it will provide guidance for restorative work.

“All such works must be approved by the JNHT,” it said.

Meanwhile, Rastafarian historian Jerry Small argued that the public outpouring of grief over damaged colonial-era landmarks must be understood within a broader ideological “construct.” He said Jamaica is still taught to see itself as “a glorious product of Independence, and that we are carrying on the great tradition and we are lucky … to be now citizens of the British Empire.”

According to Small, that narrative fuels misplaced pride.

“A lot of false pride has been shattered and is being hurt by these damaged heritage sites, most of which are not of the main population, but of the minority population and of the extractive empire,” he said. “Empire that extract out riches out of the lesser people and make themselves rich,” Small reasoned.

He argued that this worldview has long shaped state priorities, resulting in “the government of King Charles in Jamaica, the Jamaica government … [having] no respect for the Maroon heritage and the heritage sites of the Maroon, and the autonomy of the Maroon that the British officially agreed to 300 years ago.”

Small further contended that Jamaica’s grief too often centres on the ruin of colonial buildings while neglecting the erasure – sometimes at the hands of the Jamaican state itself – of Taino, Indian, Chinese and other cultural groups whose heritage, he said, has been consistently sidelined.

jovan.johnson@gleanerjm.com