And while the cane farmers were on the ground hauling all that debris away - most of the damage can only be seen from above, all those hundreds of roofs disappeared or damaged.
Tabulating and assessing all those is the job of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing. They hit the ground in Belize City along with NEMO and the City Council right after the storm. They made a rapid housing assessment which was presented to Cabinet yesterday.
The Ministry's Project Engineer today told us what the findings are. We spoke to him via Zoom from Belmopan:
Colin Escalante, Project Engineer, MIDH
"What we found is a total of 392 homes have received some form of damage and of that 284 homes we would consider to be in either of the categories which we deemed as minor, intermediate or major and then we have estimated approximately 108 homes have received some significant damage which we would consider to be a total loss."
Jules Vasquez
"How can the MIDH assist these people. Let's talk about the people whose properties are a total loss."
Colin Escalante, Project Engineer, MIDH
"The plan is to take a 2-phase approach. What we're looking at is a relief phase and a recovery phase and the relief phase will focus on addressing the 3 categories that I had mentioned earlier which entails the minor, intermediate and major repairs and then there is the recovery phase which will address the 108 houses that will entail the replacement or the total loss houses. We have a meeting set for tomorrow to discuss our execution and how we will go about addressing both phases."
Jules Vasquez
"What sort of storm resilient, but affordable structures can the MIDH recommend for people in these challenged situations?"
Colin Escalante, Project Engineer, MIDH
"There is still a lot left to be discussed when it comes to the relief phase, but what I can say when it comes to the recovery phase what a plan would be is to execute the current modular homes design that we are implementing under our housing project and we've seen that our modular designs have actually withstood the effects of Hurricane Lisa and the design also incorporates a safe area within the house which is located within the bathroom that is fully concrete area."
Jules Vasquez
"What sort of water damage did you all encounter?"
Colin Escalante, Project Engineer, MIDH
"We've gotten reports and seen some effects that in some areas was at high at 4 feet, above existing ground levels. So there us quite a bit of surge that came in. That's also another factor that needs to be taken into account when you're constructing your home, being able to resist the effect of storm surges and even flooding. On the current designs that we have for our modular homes takes that into account, so any of the houses that we built in Belize City was well above that storm surge line."
The report estimates the value of damages in the city at 9 million Belize dollars. Their assessment is ongoing as more structures are reported damaged.
