Most San Pedranos leave island but not all
And to end our coverage of Hurricane Dean we will return to a familiar place. San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, is the town in Belize that will be the first to feel Dean’s punch and is likely to be hardest hit. When we spoke to him last week, local NEMO coordinator Jim Janmohamed was making preparations to deal with an uncertain situation. Tonight the uncertainty is gone and the reality is inescapable.
Stewart Krohn
“Jim, we understand there is a mandatory evacuation order for San Pedro, has the island been evacuated? What is the status?”
Jim Janmohamed
“Stewart, the island has been evacuated, however, it was done under a voluntary evacuation situation. Everybody who wanted to leave, has left. We wound down the evacuation completely by one p.m. today. We moved within the—the few days that we had—we moved over nine thousand two hundred people from San Pedro, and about fifteen hundred or so from Caye Caulker.”
Stewart Krohn
“How many people are remaining at San Pedro and Caye Caulker, to your knowledge?”
Jim Janmohamed
“At my guess, probably twenty-five hundred to twenty-eight hundred people are still on San Pedro, and Caye Caulker tells me that there is about five hundred people still there.”
Stewart Krohn
“What is your assessment as to the safety of those people remaining?”
Jim Janmohamed
“Stewart, these people are indigenous to these island, most of them, they never left during Keith and neither any other evacuations we ever had. We are—so they have good homes, most of them, but I’m afraid that some of the newcomers who procrastinated or didn’t wanna go, are going to get in trouble. But however, we’ve put up our emergency shelters open now, so we will put them up in there.”
Stewart Krohn
“How full do you expect the shelters to get?”
Jim Janmohamed
“I’m hoping not too full because we really did evacuate a hell of a lot of people, but I think we can handle it.”
Stewart Krohn
“Jim, we know that even a close call, even like a Wilma or a Mitch , where the hurricane did not even come anywhere really close to hitting San Pedro, geography being what it is, almost every pier and the island of San Pedro and Caye Caulker was wiped out just by the waves, what kind of wave action are you expecting this time around, when you’re actually gonna have a hurricane making landfall right in your backyard?”
Jim Janmohamed
“About the same, little worst, remember we have the reef which will take off one-third of the wave action, but the wave action will be a lot higher than it was for Mitch. So we are already expecting to lose a lot of piers, and remember, Mitch we lost almost every pier because all the piers were pretty old; but since then a lot have been rebuilt and a lot stronger ones. So, we are hoping we might be able to keep one or two but most of them will be gone, and subsequently, because of that we will cutting off water supplies to the island, because one of these docks have water lines going in there and I don’t wish to lose all the water that we have in storage.”
Stewart Krohn
“Jim, during Hurricane Keith, San Pedro lost a huge number of boats because there was no place where they could shelter. Do you expect the same this time around?”
Jim Janmohamed
“I hope that the people who lost their boats have learnt a lesson from that time, where to put it. Most of the San Pedranos never, never lost their boats, it was generally newcomers to the island who didn’t know how to or where to secure their boats; but this time what has happened is, all the boats have disappeared, so I presume everybody has found a place where to— when I look down the beach there isn’t a single boat in sight.”
Stewart Krohn
“Jim, is there anything that you would like the nation to know tonight, or is there anything that you would like the nation to do for the people of San Pedro and Caye Caulker tonight as this storm closes in?”
Jim Janmohamed
“Yes, what I would really love that your audience would do, and people on the mainland, we have put nine thousand people from here and about a fifteen hundred people from Caye Caulker on the mainland. So I would love the people to afford them some courtesy and assistance if they require any. I know that the shelters are being open and I know they are being transported to those shelters, but I would like them to get some extra assistance from the locals of those towns an villages where they will sheltered; and besides that all you guys can do is pray for us.”
Stewart Krohn
“Jim, thank you very much, we will do so.”
Jim Janmohamed
“Thank you.”
Janmohamed reports that there is an ample police and B.D.F. presence on the caye to deal with any law enforcement problems that may arise.
