We also heard from village chairman Orlando Augustine who told us what it was like to be at the helm of Hopkins' hurricane response efforts.
He started off with a rebuke for N.E.M.O.
Orlando Augustine - Chairman, Hopkins Village
"I think that N.E.M.O. needs to go a little bit better than what they're doing in terms of this shelter, Hopkins shelter is not adequate for shelter. I said openly, I mentioned that before, I will say it again because the building does not have any backdoor to the back, so if a heavy wind comes, how can the people open the building with the door is opened in side and no bathroom. It is highly impossible, so we thank god that the worse did not happen. 100 miles per hour wind was blown, it would have been difficult for people to get outside, so that's one of the things. Most of the families decided to live with other families because of the COVID. Yes indeed, we are practicing social distancing, put on their mask, so most of the families did not go to the shelter, they decided to move to the families around the community and they bunked with the families. My experience was terrible as the chairperson, let me start from yesterday as last night we were doing the shelter. We had the hurricane shelter yesterday when the storm began. It began here about quarter to 12 when the heavy, heavy storm came in and I think that that was a hurricane wind I don't call it a tropical storm because god have mercy it was so terrible it frightened everybody and after that was done it takes about one hour because I time everything. The weather that breeze died down at about 10 past one and that was when we came out to look at the situation but unfortunately we couldn't see anything because it was dark and we have power shortage up to today we are still experiencing power shortage but what we have discovered is that after that storm we did our assessment this morning four houses are completely down. There are many houses that do not have any roofs, we have discovered eight, roofs off. And the ones to the beach, five of them are blown down. And then there are some houses where the trees fall into the houses and we are cutting them down right now. We experienced a storm that nobody may have been waiting, no one has prepared for it. So far thank god that no life, everybody is alive, everybody is living thank god for that. All we need now is assistance for these people to put their lives back especially those that don't have homes."
