Survivors of Hurricane Melissa Call for Community-Driven Recovery and National Unity

In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa’s devastating passage on October 28, two young survivors of the Category Five cyclone are calling for urgent community-driven recovery efforts.

Their appeal reinforces the importance of proactive, collective action in tandem with national rebuilding initiatives.

Above all, they are urging communities to set aside differences, where these may exist, and unite in the urgent task of cleanup and restoration.

“Doesn’t matter if you are an enemy, a friend, whatever… everybody has to come together and clean up… and then go back to their respective areas,” says 28-year-old Randy McIntosh.

Mr. McIntosh and 20-year-old Nishawn Peart made this passionate plea to JIS News as they passed through Black River, St. Elizabeth, following their own harrowing ordeal with the hurricane, to reach home and check on their families.

The men, who worked as chefs at Paradise Ocean View, a boutique hotel in Parottee, St. Elizabeth, recount their experience surviving the hurricane and their desperate journey home to Quickstep, a remote hilly district in the parish’s south, to reconnect with family members they had been unable to reach due to widespread power and cell service outages.

Parottee, a small fishing town located approximately 11 miles from Black River, endured the full and brutal impact of Hurricane Melissa, which unleashed a storm surge of up to 13 feet and sustained winds estimated at 295 kilometres per hour (185 miles per hour).

“We faced everything. Me and our boss and our next worker were in the storm trying to get to safety. The water reached up to our chests. We were right where the sea is… so we were getting everything full force,” Mr. McIntosh recalls.

For hours, the two men, neither of whom could swim, waded through rising floodwaters, battling fierce winds and driving rain. Along the way, they encountered others in distress, including two individuals with broken bones, and witnessed the tragic demise of one man. Desperate for a reprieve, they sought shelter wherever they could find it.

“I never knew that I could climb a wall that don’t have any grip or anything on it. We climbed a wall up two floors just to get a little rescue out of the rain. We even push in a man’s door, fully barricaded – I don’t even know how we got in there – just to come out of the rain and cold,” Mr. McIntosh says.

“When we got in there, we found out that another man was in there crying out. He had space where he could come out, but he was still worrying because outside was full of water, [so] he didn’t know where to turn,” he explains.

Mr. McIntosh informs that the devastation in Parottee is near total, with the majority of homes destroyed, leaving many residents without shelter.

Mr. Peart notes that he and Mr. McIntosh have slept on tables and the floor.

“You see the little dinner tables… the whites one you see at events, those are the ones we sleep on. Sometimes the table is in water and fish, crab, and crocodile are swimming in where we are,” he says.

Mr. Peart, who had been employed at the Paradise Ocean View Hotel for just two weeks, had taken the job in hopes of turning his life around, following the birth of his now eight-month-old daughter. However, the trauma of the hurricane has left such a lasting impact that he says he will not return to the area, even if the hotel reopens.

Their immediate goal was to reach their families after cell service was lost.

For Mr. McIntosh, the ordeal, including wading past homes swept away by the sea, was so harrowing that he now believes nothing in the world could frighten him again.

“I just have to look to Father Lord… and He alone can save you right now. Even in this devastation right now, that’s what I’m telling you,” he tells JIS News.

With this renewed perspective, Messers. McIntosh and Peart urge that in times of profound difficulty and devastation, unity and mutual support remain the only path forward.