More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria battered Dominica – pelting it with winds of nearly 160mph and stripping it of vegetation – aid workers and officials say that much of the island remains without power and water, and cut off from communications.
The island of 71,000 people was the first to bear the brunt of the category 5 hurricane when it struck in mid-September. “My roof is gone,” Roosevelt Skerrit, the island’s prime minister, wrote on Facebook as the storm made landfall. “I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding.”
Skerrit, who was rescued shortly after, described the physical damage left in the wake of the storm as “mind-boggling”, adding that winds had swept away the roofs of almost everyone he had spoken to. “We will need help, my friend, we will need help of all kinds.”
His appeal was followed by silence. Dominica’s communication towers snapped as the storm barrelled through the island, cutting the island off from the world as it struggled to cope with the destruction left by its strongest and most ferocious storm on record.
A UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team was among the first to arrive on the island, hours after the storm passed. “We saw everything totally destroyed,” said team leader Sergio Da Silva, who left the island on Monday.
Cars sat flipped over on the streets, their wheels facing the sky and the island’s lush farmland – planted with crops such as bananas and sweet potatoes – had been decimated.
“People were really lost,” Da Silva told the Guardian. “You could see the trauma in people’s eyes and how they were really affected and still a bit scared.”
Debris from trees and roofs littered the streets. “We flew over the island, and this island that used to be all green with leaves and trees was totally brown. All the trees were on the ground, there were no leaves left anymore.”
Officials in Dominica said the hurricane left 27 people dead and more than 50 people missing. Around 90% of the structures on the island have been either damaged or destroyed.
Amid severe shortages of food and water, the number of thefts across the capital city of Roseau began to rise, prompting the government to impose a nationwide curfew from 4pm to 8am.
Days later, things are slowly improving, said Da Silva. The fallen trees and landslides that had clogged roads – hampering the delivery of aid – are being cleared, while power has been restored to critical buildings such as the hospital. In the capital city, a few pharmacies and banks have managed to open this week.
But much remains to be done. Many parts of the island still lack electricity and running water, while destroyed bridges and washed-out river valleys have left rescuers unable to reach the island’s more remote communities.
“With food, water, telecommunications and access cut off since 18 September, the situation in Dominica is growing more difficult every day,” Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration told reporters this week.
Assistance has poured in from around the world, enabling authorities to distribute nearly 200,000 litres of water, along with 5,000 tarpaulins and 17 tons of high energy biscuits.
But more is needed, said Chamberlain Emmanuel of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. “Whatever is coming is consumed quickly,” he said, pointing to the fact that almost every store on the island remains shuttered. “So they’re really at the mercy of aid.”
Hurricane Maria was one of three devastating hurricanes to sweep through the region in recent weeks, and the unusually active Atlantic hurricane season has left its mark across the region.
Some 95% of houses in Barbuda – whose 1,600 residents were evacuated to neighbouring Antigua ahead of Hurricane Jose – were affected by the hurricanes, while electricity remains down in many parts of Anguilla. “It’s easy to forget, two to three weeks later,” said Emmanuel. “But the situation continues to be serious across the islands.”
As Dominica embarks on a recovery process that officials have said could take several years and cost billions of dollars, some of the prime minister’s focus in recent days has been on addressing the root cause of the destruction.
“I come to you straight from the front line of the war on climate change,” Skerrit told the UN general assembly in New York in the days following Hurricane Maria.
“Before this century, no other generation had seen more than one category 5 hurricane in their lifetime,” he said. “In this century, this has happened twice. And notably it has happened in the space of just two weeks.”
Warmer air and sea temperatures, he said, were supercharging small storms into a devastating force. “We as a country and as a region did not start this war against nature. We did not provoke it. The war has come to us,” he said. “While the big countries talk, the small island nations suffer. We need action and we we need it now.”
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