And while the storm surge is one thing - roof resilience is quite another. The storm definitely showed us that many Belizean roofs were not built to withstand storm force winds, or were not maintained to be storm ready.
Escalante discussed what they found out about roofs:
Colin Escalante, Project Engineer, MIDH
"A lot of the damage that we are noticing has to be with roof construction and it mostly deals with a lot of poor upkeep, maintenance of these structures. Some of the structures that we've also seen has experience damage, because if poor design and we've also notice some wall construction when it comes to the construction of walls especially in timber design that have experience some damage as well. It has a lot of do with the upkeep and maintenance of structures and then on some part like I had mention poor deign and maybe poor construction."
"You have to do your research to engage competent qualified persons to not only do the construction side of things, but to actually develop the designs for you and even probably offer some level of project management to ensure that the specifications and details that are within the plans are actually being adhere to when construction is taking place. So we don't live in that part of the world where we could afford to cut cost, so we need to be serious about it."
