San Pedro cleans up after storm
For the majority of Belizeans, Hurricane Mitch was a second hand storm. We felt some rain, but the winds stayed an abstract number on the weather channel. We had no idea by looking out our windows — the few which weren’t boarded up anyway — of the storm’s real power. But those who remained on Belize’s cayes have very different stories to tell and a very real mess to clean up. Yesterday I visited San Pedro and got a taste of the disaster that could have affected us all.
It was a scene of massive yet tightly confined destruction, almost as if a drunken giant had stumbled down the beach and kicked down every pier and seaside palapa for miles.
Jacqueline Woods
“Although the killer winds of Hurricane Mitch never came closer than a hundred and fifty miles from Belize’s coast it was the distant islands of Ambergris and Caye Caulker which ironically received the brunt of Mitch’s raft. The culprit wasn’t wind; it was water.”
And that water, which was sent in the form of huge swells from hundreds of miles to the southeast, found its mark on the offshore atolls and exposed coastline of Belize. At San Pedro, where the reef stands only a short swim from the beach, the destruction was particularly acute. Dozens of wooden piers were reduced to kindling by the incredible force of water. Most of the damage was done on Tuesday, when huge seas rolled over the reef and unleashed their fury on a town that thought their wall of coral would have kept them safe. Pedro Graniel was watching the scene from the comfort of a concrete verandah above the beach.
Pedro Graniel
“After seven o’clock when I saw those waves, I decided that I shouldn’t be here. But it was a little too late so I had to leave this house and I went to the other one in the back which is all cement and I nail it down, but it won’t happen again. This experience is only once in a lifetime.”
Q: “You actually saw when the waves picked up a man and threw him right over the fence?”
Pedro Graniel
“Threw him right over the fence. He was coming right there. His name is Arthurito. He was coming right there. The waves were always hitting the water. He was coming; he’s not right and this big, big wave just carried him over Barry Bowen’s fence. The kid got frightened and he just took off running.”
While Arturo’s brush with mortality was the storm’s most serious assault on human life the property damage was no laughing matter. Pier after pier was denuded of planking. Some were stripped even of their posts, leaving not a trace of their former existence. Others, like that of Barry Bowen, were twisted into what looked like a scene from a roadrunner cartoon. Luxury hotels were not spared, as Ramon’s beachfront, the idyllic spot where tourists and locals would happily sip pina coladas by the sea, was turned into a dirty brown cocktail of lumber, thatch and sand. As for those unfortunate entrepreneurs who elected to build their bars or dive shops out over the usually calm water, they discovered that the sea can be a cruel landlord.
Jacqueline Woods
“I’m standing in front of what used to be the Tackle Box Bar. Today a most fitting name would be the Sandbox.”
Horace Bladen
“We saw a lot of big waves coming in and the Tackle Box Bar was one of the main things that we wanted to watch because after nineteen years who built that place, we said that any hurricane would keep it there but this one here, it didn’t last long at all. After a couple hours when the waves started hitting it; about five forty-five so that’s when it disappeared. It just went into the water and bruk up on the beach.”
Q: “Tell us, what was the feeling like?”
Horace Bladen
“Actually it was kind of scary when we saw those size of waves coming in because I never seen those size of waves before. I am also a boat captain and I usually go to Lighthouse Reef a lot but the size of waves we saw, we wouldn’t have no right to be out there at these times. It’s pretty big.”
As big as the damage was, the drama, which preceded it, was larger. While authorities urged citizens of San Pedro and Caye Caulker to evacuate, the level of confusion was considerable. People were torn between securing their homes, businesses or boats, and saving themselves and their families. For many, the obvious decision to flee was taken too late, when there were no longer enough boats or airplanes to go around. The job of coping with the rapidly deteriorating situation fell to area representative Patty Arceo, the woman in charge of the island’s emergency operations.
Patty Arceo, Area Representative, San Pedro
“Staying here on the island with Mayor Alberto Nuñez, the Assistant Superintendent Orio, the Liaison Officer Mr. Jim Mohammed. Then in Caye Caulker we had Councilor Fermin Marin and Councilor Porfirio Guzman. It was a decision that it was not very favorable with our families but it was quite impossible to get out from the islands because we were at the forefront.
At the piers for example here in San Pedro, they were packed with families, with children from the wee hours in the morning then at the airstrip with Island Air and Tropic Air it was, I mean the place was full of people. Then across from the airstrip by where Island Rentals are there was another situation where people were just standing there with luggage and children just trying to get out.
We did as much as we can to evacuate, government assisted us, but to be honest we did what we could. We had asked the people to evacuate, some of them could not make it, some of them decided to stay. It wasn’t a pretty picture, that much I could tell you. And those days that we were here you don’t even want your worst enemies to go through what we went through because people were panicking. And it wasn’t easy going to the airstrip or to the piers and telling people that only half of your family could go.”
Those people who stayed spent some anxious days and nights wondering whether the rogue waves would be followed by equally powerful winds. Fortunately the destruction on the beach was not duplicated inland, but the smell of fear has now been replaced with that of rotting seaweed as the residents struggle to clean up the mess.
Eiden Salazar
“What we did, we try to send out messages to every man on the island that we need help here on the beach. Tourist season is just around the corner and we need the tourists to come and as much people as possible. Right now we have quite a few working. We have different areas assigned to different groups and we’re doing pretty good. I think we’re moving pretty fast. I don’t know if we’re getting tired or those boards are getting heavier.”
Omar Arceo
“We are not working for money; we’re working for our town. We need to bring it back, reconstruct it by putting everything back.”
Q: “Have you been amazed with the destruction that was caused here on the beach?”
Omar Arceo
“Yes, this is the first time in my life. I have never seen something like that before.”
What they are used to seeing this time of year is tourists, and all the work now taking place on the beach is with an eye to once again play host to thousands of happy visitors.
Alberto Nuñez, Mayor, San Pedro
“Well first of all, we want to clean up the place and then we have to make a good plan and decide which piers are going back and which are not, because we have had a bad planning on the piers. There’ve been many of them; probably we can eliminate a few of them. But our first concern is to have the place clean up and have it ready for the tourist season.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Authorities say that in two weeks time the island will be as good as new and ready to host the first wave of seasonal tourists. The question that remains is when the next storm strikes will the people of San Pedro and Caye Caulker be so lucky? Reporting from San Pedro, Ambergris Caye for News Five, I’m Jacqueline Woods.”
Our News Five crew tried to get to Caye Caulker on Sunday to view the damage there but the airstrip was not yet open. Reports from Caye Caulker, however, are that conditions there are similar to San Pedro.
