At the top of our newscast, we showed you what it was like inside Hurricane Dean's landfall in Corozal. Well here now is a look at the aftermath.
Jules Vasquez Reporting.
On the Libertad Feeder Road we were stranded for a while because there is no premium fuel available in Corozal. This is the sight we saw at one of the papaya fields there was major damage to one of the papaya fields. We are not sure who is the owner but you see here are the papaya trees prepared for harvest and some of them almost fully matured. They are plowed down. The papaya industry after Hurricane Dean is in a crisis and it is a crisis of multi-million dollar proportions. The most acute part of Hurricane Dean's landfall is that it completely undermines the papaya industry which was centered really in the Corozal District.
The highway was a complete mess and it's amazing how quickly people cleared it up. Here is a guy in Libertad who is fixing his roof. I am saying this is happening in an hour after everyone comes out. The winds subsided between 7 am and 8 am and by 9 am we have this guy on his roof preparing his roof, people cleaning the roads. These people are very community oriented.
Many houses in Libertad had their roofs split open or torn off completely. There you can see that footage. We are going here through the villages and you see a number of fallen trees in these villages, extremely consequential in terms of its just an endless string of these fallen trees.
This is Miradora Hotel within Corozal Town. It is within a stone's throw of the sea of the Bay, the Corozal Bay and this place, they didn't open it, that was ripped open. They found that open. This one over here, the wind actually tugged at the shutter and the wind actually ripped it open because of the direction was coming in.
Here we see Corozal Town. This is at about 9:30 am. People were really coming out to look around and see what had happened. Here this is one street from the Bay and as you can see it is strewn with all types of debris that has blown off from various buildings, zinc obviously. Here is a shot of some of the fallen trees. When we spoke to the Mayor, you would see that fallen trees and fallen lampposts were the two biggest problems, and after that, fallen zinc.
Jules Vasquez,
What is the situation right now in your town?
Hilberto Campos, Mayor - Corozal Town
"I have already informed my council workers to start working probably about 11 or 12. There is a lot of work as you can see and I guess obstacles will be the trees broke off and people got affected, mostly the zinc roofs that got ripped off and only one or two that fell all the way to the ground. But a lot of cleaning up, a lot of restoration of the parks that got affected, and the drains are pretty much working. I was checking them yesterday before the storm and they are working."
Jules Vasquez,
How did this storm, what is your assessment? My feelings was that the sustained hard winds lasted pretty much three am to like seven thirty to seven forty five am and we thought it would be like a fast moving storm and that it would be over us in two hours or one hour. What is your assessment?
Hilberto Campos,
"It is something very impressive. I have never witnessed something like that and I pray that it would never happen again, especially to our place in Corozal. It was frightening, I have to admit, and I believe that Corozalenos were prepared. We did our homework. As you can see, thanks to the good Lord we didn't have any casualties, any harm done to personally speaking. So first of all I would like to thank God that he spared us from the wrath of the storm."
Jules Vasquez,
Looking at the overall well being of your community, do you have any assessment of what is the value of the damage to your community?
Hilberto Campos,
"Not as yet. I am having a meeting right now as we speak, like I told I've been up the entire night from yesterday at 6 o'clock but I have a meeting right now with the deputy and the councilors and we will sit down and start working on that."
Jules Vasquez,
I saw a number of fallen lampposts. Have you gotten any indication of how you all might be able to get electricity?
Hilberto Campos,
"No. All of that will be discussed at the meeting, how quick we are going to have electricity restored in the town and how quick we can clean up the entire town and bring it back to normal."
Jules Vasquez,
All things considered, do you consider your municipality lucky?
Hilberto Campos,
"Definitely. Like I said, thanks to the good Lord we didn't have any serious casualty or anything as such and I believe that he spared us. No matter as much damage as the place looks like, like total havoc, but lives, I think it is more important that lives were saved."
Here we have an interview with a resident.
Resident #1,
"I know this hurricane was for us in Corozal."
Jules Vasquez,
Were you afraid for your family's well being? Did you think someone might get hurt?
Resident #1,
"No, no."
Jules Vasquez,
Even with the breeze, because I was here and it was like four hours of just this breeze? It didn't frighten you?
Resident #1,
"No because I have a son and a daughter at caye. I wasn't frightened at anything because I said nothing could happen because hurricanes come, hurricanes know who to do bad to and who to do good to so I wasn't afraid for hurricanes."
Jules Vasquez,
And because you know you weren't on the bad list?
Resident #1,
"When you are a good person and you are on the correct road, you are good with everybody, we didn't lose anything, nothing at all."
Jules Vasquez,
Just a few trees.
Resident #1,
"Well that's natural because you cut it and they grow again. But I wasn't afraid of the storm."
She was very happy to boast to me that her forty two year old house didn't fall. She has a forty two year old house beside her cement house however a lamppost nearby fell and she says that's a sign that she had done right. We have an interview here with another resident, this one from Ranchito Village.
Resident #2,
"Well everything went down because of the breeze."
Jules Vasquez,
At what time did this happen?
Resident #2,
"This happened around 3:30 to 4:00."
Jules Vasquez,
What did it sound like?
Resident #2,
"Well it sounded like whistling, the breeze. Meanwhile when it started to pick up, it picked up with force."
Jules Vasquez,
Did it make anybody frightened?
Resident #2,
"Well we weren't frightened because we didn't stay here. My wife and I went to my son's house. So we left the house empty because she said that we can't be sure with the house because she felt the breeze was going to come hard. So we decided to go to my son's house."
Jules Vasquez,
Where do you go from here? You don't have a roof over your head.
Resident #2,
"I don't have any roof, only those zincs which I will patch it with for the meanwhile."
