And theirs aren't the only homes which were destroyed. All over the Belize District, residents are still recovering and rebuilding. And in a damage assessment conducted by the Ministry of Natural Resources, they found that over 250 structures were totally destroyed by the storm.
According to the deputy chairperson of the Damage Assessment & Needs Analysis Committee, the 40 public officers who were deployed to do the assessments came back with harrowing tales of storm-affected residents in dire conditions. She told us more today.
Tenielle Hendy, Deputy Chair, Damage Assessment & Needs Analysis Committee
"With our assessments, we found that those coastal areas of Belize City coincided with storm surge so we found that they had a lot of flooding in addition to structural damages, we had some structures that maintained their integrity but they had flood damage and then we had both, and we had just structural damages, so it's really a wide cross section. Belize City has over 2,500 buildings assessed and we are seeing so far, as we still have some assessments pending, that about 250 or little bit over have been totally destroyed. Level 3 damages, just about the same, but we have majority of the damages coming in at level 1 or 2."
"It is alarming, I can't imagine going to a shelter and coming back and not having anything. I think one house would be alarming to me. It's one thing to be displaced and another thing to start over from scratch but you know we need to be thankful for life but it's really heart wrenching for officers who go out and do these assessments, you see people in varied disposition, you know your situation, and your heart really goes out to them. We had one person in Democracia where they just got a new house and it was destroyed. And then they're expecting a child so that's added stress. We had in Belize City where on the outskirts, they were in their homes and throughout the hurricane it just started falling apart, and they got injured. They had a broken arm, a broken leg, and their house is destroyed. They had no where to go. What are we going to do? So our officers really comment to us that it's hard going out there."
"Like all the other 13 special committees, we prepare our report outlining the structures, damages to structures, whether it's structural or flood, what the needs are that we have captured and where the hotspots are."
"Where the information guides the entire country, it guides the planning of the cities of towns in terms of structure, maybe we need to build better, maybe we need to invest in hurricane straps. We've seen fairly new structures with their zincs blown off, their roof gone and so when we interview them and speak to them, they're like, oh I didn't have hurricane clips and so you know you have persons investing in these homes mostly mennonite based home or some others built but you know they didn't put hurricane straps in them and so it's very unique that structure that you would look at face value and say, oh that will be fine, are those same structures that sustained damages."
Notably, the survey by the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing found that a total of 392 homes have received some form of damage and, of that, 284 homes had minor, intermediate or major damage, and 108 homes were classified as a total loss.
