THANK God for life’, says a sign on the road from the Point Salines airport in Grenada. `Together we shall rebuild Grenada’, proclaims a banner defiantly stretched on the façade of a bank. Music is back on the mini-buses plying the public transportation routes along roads cleared of fallen utility poles and other debris in and around the capital St. George’s and other parts of the island. Students were back out to some schools last week and a restaurant I went to for dinner Tuesday night was full. The traffic lights are working in and around St. George’s and the narrow and winding streets in the quaint capital are jammed with vehicles during the work week. There’s no doubt about it – Grenada is picking itself up and shaking off the dust and debris from Ivan the Terrible, the deadly hurricane which devastated the tiny south Caribbean island when it threatened to blow it into oblivion for about two hours on the afternoon of September 7, last. But it’s a hard road to travel and a long, long way to go. Col. George Robinson, head of a Trinidad and Tobago 200-strong military contingent deployed on the island two days after Ivan struck, said he had not seen “disaster on such a scale before”. “I tried to remain emotionally uninvolved when I got here. I tried not to be traumatised”, he told a small Guyanese media group visiting the island last week under the auspices of the Guyana Government. Robinson tried to be the typical hardboiled military type, putting up a tough front when asked how he felt when he saw the extent of the destruction. But he admitted, “It touched me in my private moments.” A contingent of 100 soldiers from the Guyana Defence Force is to be fully deployed in Grenada this week under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Lovell to form the Caribbean Support Group Grenada with troops from Trinidad and Tobago and Belize. Robinson, who will be in charge of the regional group, said their mandate includes maintaining security and restoring law and order, helping to distribute relief and restoring power, water and other supplies. Grenada, with its beautiful beaches and scenic beauty is a tropical paradise. Its underlying beauty shines through even with the depredation Ivan wreaked but it will be a while before tourists once more head there in droves to lap up its splendours. A pride and joy for the islanders has been their Grand Etang rainforest, a large area rich with tropical flora and fauna. Ivan flattened it and it’s a painful sight for Grenadians. “I can’t stand to pass there now”, said Cecil Hypolite, General Manager of Caribbean Cargo Industries Limited, the hurt evident in his eyes. Snapped power lines crisscross roads, fallen utility poles are sprawled at the sides, crumpled zinc (galvanized) sheets are in heaps in many places, ugly brown scars stain the normally green sides of hills and mountains where the storm uprooted and snapped trees and decimated agricultural crops, including nutmegs, cocoa, banana and cash crops. The red roofs that for long dominated the Grenada landscape are all but gone, cruelly ripped off in Ivan’s anger, and everywhere now there are blue tarpaulins covering the gaping holes. Officials estimate that some 90 per cent of housing has been severely damaged and many poor families have lost their homes. Tourism and agriculture are the mainstay of the economy and with many hotels badly damaged and crops ravaged, thousands are out of jobs. One official told me that 60 per cent of all jobs in the hotel industry are gone with many hotels shut down. Robinson said the need for shelter is urgent and the island desperately requires building materials for the reconstruction. A Guyanese team was on the island last week for talks with government officials on possibly supplying pre-cut timber for houses. Timothy Antoine, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, which has been charged with the critical reconstruction programme on the island, estimates that at least 6,000 low income houses would have to be built for displaced families. The Trinidad and Tobago Government has announced it will be providing a $5M grant to help in the reconstruction efforts. According to the Government Information Service (GIS), Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said this facility opens up the way for budgetary support to pay salaries, as well as providing a mechanism to help people restore their homes, through a line of credit. The GIS said Venezuela has announced it will be providing 150 houses to assist persons whose homes were ravaged by Hurricane Ivan. Among other undertakings, Venezuelan volunteers have been cleaning streets and parks of debris left by Ivan. The agency said the Government of Venezuela has also donated equipment to the Grenada Government to transmit information relevant to the reconstruction process to citizens throughout the country. The government has also set up a committee that will seek to change the construction landscape, so that buildings can withstand the force of hurricanes, GIS said. The Government of Grenada Disaster Assessment and Recommendation Committee is spearheaded by Mr. Anslem La touché, the Managing Director of Creative Design and Building and includes Nigel Renwick, Alfonsus Daniel, Sewlyn Woodroffe and James Brathwaite. GIS said it was born out of the realisation that the roofs of some 95% of houses in Grenada were blown off or destroyed during the hurricane. The government, in its response, has decided to strengthen the capabilities of building contractors to do their job effectively, and in this context, is setting up a body of new standards for the construction sector, it said. Antoine, who put the damage from the hurricane at just under US$1Bln, said the focus is also on economic reconstruction. With agriculture and tourism devastated, the productive sectors “have been virtually decimated”, he told the visiting Guyanese journalists. They are trying to get agriculture back on its feet and Antoine is optimistic that tourism can be substantially renewed within three years. “The good news in the gloom and doom” is that the cruise ship terminal was not damaged and this aspect of the tourism sector can be moving by the end of the month once the tourism sites “are safe and ready”, he said. “We are under no illusion about what we have suffered”, he said but indicated that with the help of its Caribbean Community (CARICOM) partners and the international community, Grenada could overcome. Grenadians are beginning to get over the trauma of the hurricane and are determined to move on. But Brenda Hood, Tourism, Civil Aviation, Culture and Performing Arts Minister, in charge of the relief effort, feels it will be a long process. “It’s very traumatic (and) we are working on psycho-social counselling…to provide support to people because a lot of people…haven’t recovered from this and it’s going to be a long process of debriefing and healing,” she said. Senator Einstein Louison, Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, said people were quickly “getting back to life” and felt that the government’s decision to reopen schools last week was “tremendous and made a lot of difference to this society.” Most secondary schools and many primary schools have been reopened and many children were returning to classes, he told the Chronicle. This, he felt, has “made a major difference to the psyche of the society.” Running water was back, electricity supply was being restored and there have been no epidemics or outbreak of diseases on the island, he said. Former Permanent Secretary in the Trade Ministry here, Nigel Gravesande, now Registrar at the T.A. Marryshow Community College in Grenada, said the recovery process has been “slow, difficult and painful” and will require a concerted effort by Grenadians and substantial support from the international community. He said the goodwill generated so far has been encouraging and it will be about to two to three years “before we are back to where we were”. The focus over the next year or two will have to be on rebuilding the infrastructure with a lot of help from the international community, he said. Hypolite said it will take a long time for the recovery process to kick in because the country has been severely set back, primarily because the economic mainstay of nutmeg has been devastated and it will be tough for farmers to get back on their feet. “We have the potential to bounce back…a lot of businessmen are looking and rallying to work out a programme to bring this country back to life again.” But he was disappointed that not many local Grenadians were coming out to help in the clean up programme “before the country can start looking at some sort of decent lifestyle again.” “We are very optimistic that within a couple of months we will start seeing some recurrence of economic activity in the country”, he told the Chronicle. Like several other businessmen and government officials, he felt the destruction caused by Ivan has thrown up the need for a broader-based economy and one not so fragile. There is a quiet determination among the people as they move around, with the stark reminders of the wrath of Ivan all around. A contractor said, “It was terrible, but you can’t dwell on it…we have to pick up the pieces and move on.” Col. Robinson said, “It’s going to take a long time for this country…but I am seeing people starting to organise to do the hard work that is necessary”. SOURCE: GUYANACHRONICLE.COM