‘People Bounce Back Very Quickly’ : Storm-Weary Jamaicans Hard at Work Rebuilding

“We put the old roof back on, but if you look up, you see stars in the night,” Cleveland Kerr, who lives on the poorest and hardest-hit street in this poorest of villages, said with a laugh.

“But we’re trying,” interjected Kerr’s next-door neighbor, Alphanso Tyrell, who had just finished clearing two fallen trees and sweeping the hard-packed red earth of his tiny but tidy front yard.

The next step, Tyrell said optimistically, is to rebuild the scrap-wood fence and restore the sense of independence and privacy around his wood-and-tin house, reduced by Hurricane Gilbert from three small rooms to one.

Like most of their neighbors in this village just west of Kingston, Kerr, 54, and Tyrell, 44, were wasting no time Monday in putting aside the paralyzing shock and dejection that followed the direct hit one week ago of the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful recorded hurricane, which left 26 people dead here.

Throughout Jamaica, the sounds of hammers and chainsaws and the sights of rolling truckloads of food and volunteer technicians restoring power lines make it clear that most here already are hard at work rebuilding what initially appeared to be a devastated island nation.

“It looks pretty hopeless when you’ve lost your roof and lost your source of income, but with a little help and their own initiative, people bounce back very quickly,” observed Paul Bell, regional chief of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. Bell is a widely experienced relief official who interrupted a planned assignment in flood-stricken Bangladesh last week to come to Jamaica.

As men and women chopped up and dragged away the debris of the storm, it became apparent to officials in Kingston that the damage, while devastating in some areas, was not as great as had been feared last week.

Prime Minister Edward Seaga on Sunday scaled down an earlier estimate of as much as $8 billion in damage and reconstruction costs to between $500 million and $1 billion--still a staggering amount. And his initial estimate of 500,000 Jamaicans homeless--nearly one-fourth of the country’s population--seemed high Monday.

To the greatest relief of officials, the country’s two biggest earners of foreign exchange, tourism and bauxite, the ore from which aluminum is fabricated, are “very, very much alive and kicking,” said Sen. Hugh Hart, minister of mining, energy and tourism, whom many consider the second most powerful man in Seaga’s government.

14,000 Hotel Rooms

“We have about 14,000 tourist hotel rooms, and about 1,750 of them were damaged, according to the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Assn.,” Hart said. “Seventy percent of the hotels were not hurt at all, and most of the rest suffered only minor damage and will be back in full operation within two to six weeks. Some with more extensive damage will be back in business in varying degrees between now and the beginning of December.”

Hart said the country’s major bauxite mine and three alumina plants already are back in full operation and exporting material.

Electric power and the pumping of clean drinking water, which were totally cut off by the storm, have been restored in selected areas, including most of the north coast tourist strip, according to Hart. And, he added, “the industrial sector will be back on track in a matter of a week or two--it’s just a question of restoring their power.”

“When I went out on the streets last Tuesday I thought, ‘My God, this place is never going to recover.’ Everybody was walking around in a daze,” said John Ruland of Whittier, Calif., president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Jamaica. “My wife took one look from a hilltop and said it looked like someone had come through with a giant weed cutter.

Agriculture Is an Exception

“Now here we are a week later, and we’re over 50% of the way back to getting the economy rolling, with the very sad exception of agriculture and social services like schools and hospitals.”

Ruland said his Jamaica Flour Mills, managed by Pillsbury, resumed operations Thursday, as did manufacturing of cement, cooking oil and animal feeds. “The industrial sector came through with quite light damage, now that we have a chance to look at it,” he said. “For most, the only real holdup is restoring electrical power.”

Agriculture, which employed about half of all Jamaicans and provided about 70% of the country’s food needs, was virtually wiped out by the storm. Seaga and his ministers said they have put an urgent priority on what they expect to be a years-long effort to restore the once-lush fields of vegetable crops and export commodities such as bananas, coffee, citrus fruits and coconuts.

‘Virtually Complete Wipeout’

“You’re talking about a virtually complete wipeout,” Hart said. “Bananas are 100% gone, coconuts 70% to 80% finished. Poultry 100%, citrus and coffee not as bad as they could be. Most of the trees are still standing, but all their berries and blossoms were blown to smithereens, so an entire crop was lost. Ground crops, vegetables were badly hurt, and sugar cane was flattened.”

The cost of the agricultural devastation, Hart said, will come in heavy expenditures of scarce foreign exchange for food imports during at least the next three to four months, while new crops are planted and mature. But he said the government does not anticipate a problem of farm worker unemployment.

“You’re going to have a different form of employment: Instead of reaping, you’ll be planting,” he said. “We’re going to go on a crash basis--clean up the fields, reap whatever we can from the ruined crops and replant.”

Both Seaga and Hart said the government and private agencies have been too busy coping with emergency needs to outline a coherent recovery plan, but the reconstruction is rapidly taking shape informally. Like Ruland’s flour mill and other industries, the agricultural sector already shows signs of starting its own recovery.

Six Months to Maturity

“We are putting our regular work force back on full-time today to clean up and begin repairing the damage of about $1 million that we suffered,” David R. Pearse, British manager of Tropicana Sugar Estates, one of the country’s largest such enterprises, said Monday. “After that’s done, it will take about six months for a new crop of cane to mature.” Pearse’s plantation is in easternmost St. Thomas Parish, hardest hit of Jamaica’s 14 districts and traditionally among its most productive in agriculture.

John Orrett, a member of the Jamaica Coconut Board and manager of a 3,000-acre plantation, said his operation also was restarting immediately. He said trees that had been broken like matchsticks were being cleared away, but he noted that new trees must grow for four to five years before they will bear fruit. Coconuts are the source of soap, cooking oil and other products for use in Jamaica and abroad.

Pearse said the major banana growers, who have been producing Jamaica’s biggest single agricultural export, have told him they also plan to move quickly to get new plants in the ground, with the expectation of fresh crops of the year-round tropical fruit in about nine months.

‘Crisis’ in Marijuana

Even the island’s illicit marijuana plantations reportedly are taking urgent steps to get back in business after suffering heavily from the storm.

“We are in a crisis,” the Kingston Daily Gleaner quoted a marijuana grower as complaining Monday. “It’s going to take between six and eight months to climb out of it.”

Although the target for a decade of a serious U.S.-Jamaican eradication program, ganja, as marijuana is called here, is unofficially estimated to earn island growers about $175 million annually. The Daily Gleaner said the current crop was flattened and warehouses were devastated by water that soaked bales of pot that was ready for market.

“Farmers yesterday were sowing ganja seedling in a desperate effort to plant as much as they can, as quickly as they can, to get a crop by next spring,” the Gleaner said.

U.S. and other Western officials said they agree with Seaga that Jamaica will need substantial economic assistance to rebuild the country and its economy, which a little more than a week ago was considered a rare success story in the Caribbean. But they differ over how much outside assistance will be required.

$1-Billion Estimate

“We haven’t made an assessment yet, but it has got to exceed $1 billion,” said Hart, expressing hope that a combination of aid over the next few years from Washington, other developed countries and international lending institutions will be sufficient.

U.S. officials here have made no firm assessments or recommendations, they said, but Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) reportedly told Seaga that he would ask Congress for an immediate $100 million in emergency assistance.

Without commenting on the amount of aid Jamaica might need, Bell stressed that in his view self-help is the best form of disaster relief.

“It’s amazing how much is back on track here already,” he said. “I think in 30 days almost everything will be recovering very well. But in no way does this discount the need for outside help.”

“We’re very dependant upon what resources we can get from overseas,” said Pearnel Charles, Seaga’s minister of public utilities and transport. “We have the ambition, and if we can match the ambition with overseas financial assistance, we can rebuild the country.”

Nonetheless, Charles added, “it’s going to be a long time before we see Jamaica the way she was two weeks ago.”