Yvonne Ba­boolal

St Vin­cent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves says his coun­try has been hit by a dis­as­ter the likes of which cit­i­zens have nev­er seen and the is­land will need hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to re­build.Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is as­sur­ing that T&T stands ready to as­sist both St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia with re­lief ef­forts and emer­gency sup­plies.

A re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) yes­ter­day said emer­gency sup­plies were al­ready on the way to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and St Lu­cia, where a to­tal of 13 peo­ple lost their lives af­ter ter­ri­ble floods wreaked hav­oc on the is­lands and dam­aged in­fra­struc­ture. Sev­er­al peo­ple are al­so still miss­ing.The OPM said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as chair of Cari­com and lead prime min­is­ter on se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, spoke with Gon­salves yes­ter­day on the sit­u­a­tion in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

"They spoke of the ex­ten­sive in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age, in­clud­ing flood­ing of the ma­jor hos­pi­tal, the Mil­ton Cato Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, and dam­age to the ET Joshua Air­port and roads and bridges around the is­lands."Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured Gon­za­lves T&T "is will­ing to as­sist St Vin­cent and the Grenadines with re­lief ef­forts and emer­gency sup­plies."

"As such, an as­sess­ment team com­pris­ing Dr Stephen Ram­roop, CEO of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, and Rear Ad­mi­ral Richard Kelshall, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty co-or­di­na­tor in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, will be head­ing to St Vin­cent to­day to as­cer­tain the needs of the is­lands."Rear Ad­mi­ral Kelshall is al­so sched­uled to at­tend a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Gon­salves fol­low­ing his ini­tial as­sess­ment," the OPM said.

It said emer­gency sup­plies were or­gan­ised to be de­liv­ered to St Lu­cia yes­ter­day on a Caribbean Air­lines flight sched­uled to leave T&T at 12.30 pm.That flight even­tu­al­ly left just be­fore 4 pm be­cause of dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting per­mis­sion to land from the St Lu­cian au­thor­i­ties.Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so re­ceived a call yes­ter­day from Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art, as­sur­ing his coun­try stands ready to help with re­lief ef­forts for its Cari­com part­ners.

The St Vin­cent gov­ern­ment said it would need mil­lions of dol­lars to re­build the coun­try, which has been bat­tered by the dis­as­ter, which left eight dead and at least five oth­ers miss­ing, Ken­ton Chance of the Caribbean News Agency re­port­ed yes­ter­day.The re­port said Gon­salves, who re­turned to the is­land from a Lon­don hol­i­day on Box­ing Day, dubbed yes­ter­day "Clean up Kingstown Day." Kingstown is the cap­i­tal of St Vin­cent.

"Let us work to­geth­er, we will re­cov­er, we will re­ha­bil­i­tate this coun­try and we will do it in the short­est pos­si­ble time," Gon­salves told the me­dia in St Vin­cent, short­ly af­ter at­tend­ing a meet­ing with dis­as­ter and emer­gency of­fi­cials af­ter his ar­rival home.

Gon­salves said ac­cord­ing to the brief­ing he re­ceived, the coun­try had ex­pe­ri­enced "a dis­as­ter of a pro­por­tion the likes of which we have not seen in liv­ing mem­o­ry." He said the de­struc­tion caused by a weath­er sys­tem called a trough re­sult­ed in the loss of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on the is­land, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 110,000."Over the next few days, we will get a clear­er pic­ture as to the full ex­tent," he said.

Chance re­port­ed that the gov­ern­ment ad­vised yes­ter­day that giv­en the state of Kingstown, ac­tiv­i­ty in the city should be kept at a min­i­mum, and Gon­salves had called on all work­ers in es­sen­tial ser­vices to re­port for du­ty."I want to re­peat, it is not a bank hol­i­day but is es­sen­tial­ly to clean up Kingstown," Gon­salves re­port­ed­ly told cit­i­zens.Gon­salves said get­ting to Kingstown from some ar­eas would be dif­fi­cult be­cause of dam­aged roads.

He al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude for lives spared. "As dif­fi­cult as the cir­cum­stances are, we are for­tu­nate to be alive," Gon­salves said."It pains me great­ly. Those who have suf­fered ma­te­r­i­al loss, I am al­so deeply pained and I give you my word I will do my best to help. We have had a very dif­fi­cult hit."He said when the dust set­tled, the St Vin­cent gov­ern­ment would build a mon­u­ment to those who died.

Elec­tric­i­ty re­stored

A T&T Guardian free­lancer who is cur­rent­ly at home in St Vin­cent, Te­nille Austin, said the north­ern half of the is­land, from George­town to San­cy, was cut off from Kingstown be­cause the Caratal Bridge was bro­ken in two.She said while elec­tric­i­ty was re­stored in many ar­eas, most of the coun­try was in a mess and get­ting pipe-borne wa­ter re­mained a ma­jor prob­lem.She said the coun­try need­ed con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, food and wa­ter and help had been com­ing from T&T and Grena­da.

A lot of farm­ers' live­stock died and fields of ba­nana, a main crop in St Vin­cent, were lost in the floods, she said.Austin said in the Kingstown area, res­i­dents who spent Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas Day with­out wa­ter have been as­sem­bling at the head­quar­ters of the Cen­tral Wa­ter & Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (CWSA) to re­ceive buck­ets of wa­ter from a tank in the yard. The CWSA has al­so been de­liv­er­ing truck-borne wa­ter to res­i­dents in oth­er ar­eas.

Austin, who lives near Kingstown, said she was not sure how vil­lagers in the north­ern half of the is­land who were cut off have been far­ing."A lot of the rivers over­flowed their banks and the wa­ter may be dirty. But there are springs and stand­pipes."Garth Saun­ders, CEO of the CWSA, told the lo­cal Search­light news­pa­per it could cost EC$20 mil­lion to re­store wa­ter to the is­land. He said 75 per cent of the coun­try's wa­ter sup­ply was dam­aged, with eight of the 11 wa­ter sys­tems be­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly put out of com­mis­sion.

Do­mini­ca News On­line yes­ter­day re­port­ed the is­land's Cab­i­net had met to plan the way for­ward af­ter the Christ­mas dis­as­ter.Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit cut short his US va­ca­tion and re­turned home to deal with the mass flood­ing and de­struc­tion."I have vis­it­ed the per­sons and ar­eas af­fect­ed and I must say that it's not a pleas­ant sight to have seen peo­ple in that state, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing Christ­mas," he said.

"The gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted it­self to as­sist­ing those af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing the ho­tels of Ever Green and An­chor­age."The OPM re­lease yes­ter­day said T&T was ready to as­sist its Cari­com neigh­bours, but no spe­cif­ic men­tion was made of Do­mini­ca, al­so se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by floods caused by a dead­ly weath­er sys­tem, but where no lives were re­port­ed lost.CEO of the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd Andy John­son told the T&T Guardian he did not know if Do­mini­ca had asked for as­sis­tance.

"We are fo­cus­ing on St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia," he said."The as­sis­tance to these coun­tries was based on dis­cus­sions the Prime Min­is­ter held with Dr Gon­salves and re­quests for as­sis­tance."John­son said if Do­mini­ca asked for help he was sure the re­quest would be con­sid­ered.