Canada assisting with housing for Arthur’s victims
In June, rains from Tropical Storm Arthur had residents in northern and southern Belize fleeing for their lives as rivers overflowed their banks and floods raced through low-lying communities. But tonight there is good news for displaced families from the Melinda Forest Station compound in Hope Creek in the Stann Creek District. On Monday, groundbreaking ceremonies were held in the village for the commencement of a housing project. Construction has already begun on twelve houses on higher lots less susceptible to flooding. Some funding and labour for the project are being provided by the Canadian government. According to High Commissioner Kenneth Cook, building houses in Belize is a good training for Canada’s military engineering corps and reconstructive forces, which will be deployed to Afghanistan to assist in that country’s rebuilding efforts.
Kenneth Cook, Canadian High Commissioner
“They were looking for a place to come and do some initial training and make themselves useful at the same time and as I said in my short remarks, we were asked here, the heads of mission in the region if they thought there was a place that would be particularly suitable and I said, yes, Belize.”
Melvin Hulse, Minister of NEMO
“We are now building a solid cement house for them. It is two feet off the ground, back filled two feet off the ground, it will properly, completely wired, it will have a ceiling in it, it will have bathrooms, it is a structure that when the next storm comes, I don’t have to worry about they evacuating themselves because hurricane wah can’t move it because we are really strengthening up, especially the roof structure. NEMO, as an organization, is moving more to the mitigation component of it and that is in respect to secure houses, that some sort of building codes is done in people who living in flood prone areas, in respect to what type of lands are giving out along the hillside or along rivers. So we looking at the whole mitigation process to minimize—because you cannot stop a disaster, you cannot stop flooding, you cannot stop a hurricane—but you can minimise the extent of the damage.”
The starter homes measure twenty by forty feet and should be completed within a month. The Belize Defence Force is assisting with the labour, while additional funding has been procured from a number of other international and local sources. According to NEMO’s C.E.O., Colonel George Lovell, they are hoping to get enough funding to build about fifty homes, as over forty-five families in the area were severely affected.
