Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back. Well, this time, ladies and gentlemen, we have for you an update on what's taking place in St. Vincent, the Grenadines. We've been seeing the videos, the images we've heard from Doctor Ralph Gonzalez last evening.
Joining us this morning, someone who will be able to give us some more information.
Former radio announcer and New York, I have it as groovemaster. Good morning to you and welcome to our program.
[00:00:38] Speaker C: Hey, greetings, readings. Good morning. Good morning. And good morning to your listeners as well. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Nice to have you with us here this morning.
Let me allow you just as we begin to familiarize my listeners with you, tell us a bit about yourself and some of the things that you're involved in.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Okay. Well, as you said, I'm a former radio announcer and news presenter with SVG broadcasting here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I did that for about eleven. Well, I was a radio announcer for about 1112 years. I've done the news presenting for about six, six or seven of those years. I'm currently working as an admin officer, too. That's my official designation within the division of sports and Physical Education in the Ministry of the public Service, Consumer affairs and Sports. And I'm also a track and field coach.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: It's nice to have you with us here this morning. There's a lot of concern across the region for the obvious. Karaoke has hit really hard and we know that the Grenadines, there's a lot of devastation. Grenada taking the full brunt of Hurricane barrel, which has now moved on to category five and is moving up the island to Dominica and I think some others as well.
Tell us, give us the personal account of what transpired and what you saw and what has happened to some of your countrymen and to some of the infrastructure. What's really taking place?
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Okay. Well, I'll take you back to at least a week or so where a lot of Vincentians here had been following. There's a particular meteorologist who has a YouTube channel, you know, and a lot of Vincentians tend to follow him and himself, along with other meteorologists and meteor channels, were already monitoring the fact that the system had been created, had developed this early and also this large at this, at this particular time in the season, and also the fact that it was basically making a beeline straight for, between St. Vincent and Grenada.
So we were already on, on edge. As it grew closer. We, of course, went on high alert and this also being the. Well, last weekend, that is being the first week weekend of Carnival here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Vinci, Mass.
The 1011 days of carnival activities kicked off on Friday, but we knew that the impending hits would have happened on Monday.
We were well informed through the government here to the government channels and of course the YouTube meteorologists and whatnot. On Sunday, Saturday afternoon was the junior carnival, kiddies Carnival, as we call it here, where the children have their time on stage and on the roads. But folks were kind of, of course, split between two minds because there were. Some folks were focused on that. Some folks were focused. Some folks were focused on the storm, on the storm that was coming that got out of the way. So that was done and was able to completed on Saturday. The prime minister gave, made an address where he was saying that basically a shutdown, not an official shutdown, but he was saying that even though there were carnival events that were scheduled for Sunday, that he said he was suggesting that they should be wrapped up by 05:00 p.m. there were also some private events that some were postponed and some shifted their times forward. One event I know had was scheduled from three to 08:00 p.m. they decided to shift it forward from twelve to five. So everyone was basically aware and in place.
Also, the order for the shelter in place was given for, I think, six or 07:00 p.m. i can't remember the exact time. Um, so. So folks were. So folks. Folks were prepared. Um, on Sunday, the supermarkets were, I guess, as you can imagine, are pretty much filled with people trying to stock up on last minute things, um, emergency supplies and whatnot. Um, on Monday, the. It. Well, of course it gradually. It gradually started and got worse and worse. They expected the hit to begin at around 08:00 p.m. 08:00 a.m. sorry, 08:00 a.m. on Monday, at about 08:00 a.m. it was still relatively quiet.
But then things started to really kick up. Maybe at about ten, about 2 hours later or so, we started to get some really strong winds, a heavy gust of. A heavy shower of rain ever so often. But really at about after twelve, maybe about 01:00 but between. Between twelve 33, that was when we really. That was when burial really arrived.
As for. As for me here while. While the storm was in, was happening, I was monitoring some social media. Well, social media and we're seeing people who are seeing where roofs would have blown off and whatnot. And these things even at ma'am where I am in one of the suburbs of Kingston. I live in Kingston park, which is just about a mile or so north of the city center.
Even in. Even in my area here, I could have seen trees being blown over, being uprooted. There's a farm that backs the property where I live, where the greenhouses have basically been torn to shreds. They have plastic. There's a plastic covering that they have over them. So those are now just remnants of what they used to be. The crops are flatden.
The. A few persons around where I live lost roofs. My next door neighbor lost a couple sheets of galvanize off her roof. Actually, I went outside to find one sheet just resting comfortably in my front yard.
There's a wall that separates myself and her that came down because there were some empty barrels that they had stacked up there because of a business that they run. So I guess the pressure of. Well, I guess the weight of that plus the wall was pretty much all walls. So the wall came down, the barrels ended up in my yard. Next to me, there was a plum tree that basically looked like it exploded.
So even, let's see.
So we could, after the storm kind of quieted down, this was, I probably think about five after about 05:00 or so, when the high winds really died down, it had stopped raining. The all clear wasn't given, but, you know, folks, inquisitive and curiosity, folks kind of started to venture out and peep around to see what was happening, to see how neighbors had fared and whatnot. So we could see, um, the folks in my neighborhood, on my street, were all kind of congregated outside my gates, and we could look around and see where houses, roofs were gone, where there were people, um, trying to do. Trying to start some repairs, um, albeit sort of ill advised because, you know, with the. All wasn't given and, you know, anything, anything could have happened at that point. But, I mean, you know, we thank the almighty that once it passed, it went on its way. Nothing untoward had happened since then. I got a report this morning of at least one death on the grenadine island of Beckwe. That is the closest to the mainland, the largest burnt grenadine island. I'm not sure the age or agenda of the person, but I just got from our National Broadcasting Corporation radio, on their social media page, someone just sent me a clip of a post that was made saying that there was one confirmed death in Beckwe. I, like you, had seen the photos and videos from Union Island. I have a few friends who live down there in Union island and saw videos where, I mean, it looked almost something like something out of a movie, a disaster movie, where sometimes you hear of these things and you hear them happen in other countries. You see them happening in other countries, but when they happen very close to home, you know, it hits differently to see, to see what that took place. So I was there looking at the Captain Mozart square, and it is nothing like what it looked like prior to the passage of Hurricane Beryl.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: I have friends, very close friends who are in the military services, and a couple years gone. Bye. We had sent a team to some island, I can't remember which one, following devastation. And in speaking to him when he came back, he said that unless you are there and you see for yourself the devastation and the destruction and the impact it has on people's lives, you may never really be able to fully appreciate what people are going through.
We see the images and we see the videos and we hear the officials speaking and everything else, but it's from a distance, so we're insulated. So I know that we don't, we don't have a full idea of what's going on. Unless you've experienced it, you really can't, you can't associate with it. The storm has come. It has gone.
What were some of the immediate things that people did right after?
[00:10:01] Speaker C: Well, for right now, folks are sort of in cleanup mode. I can hear. I actually went on the road yesterday to visit my fiance, and while I was going there, I could see folks who were already out clearing debris from roads. You could see there were areas where they were clearing it at the time. There were areas where you could have seen where it was already cleared.
And these were neighborhood people, right? So folks who lived in the particular neighborhoods just immediately came out basically as a show of solidarity and worked together to get roads cleared and so on. So at least, you know, there was a passageway for traffic, if needs be, to get through a lot of people.
This has been the first major storm of this major disaster, of this, of this nature that persons have experienced. Because other than the volcanic eruption a few years ago, storm wise, we have been really spared the passage of any major storms over the last, I guess, ten, maybe 15 years or even further than that. I think the most damaging storm, if you will, that we have had was a trough system that just popped up out of nowhere on Christmas Eve, 2013. You know, where it just started raining and it just never stopped. So there was, there was massive flooding. But for an event like this, where we saw it coming, we got prepared, but still worth taking aback because it is the first time in um. In my, in my. My 47 years that I have experienced um, a category four hurricane.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: You know, um, the. I remember there being a storm. I don't remember if it was tropical storm David, which was in the eighties, um, which passed over St. Vincent, but as far as I know. But then again, I was a child. I was a child at that point. So I, you know, my, my, my experience of it will be a little less eye opening or the awareness of it might not be as much as I am now, but um. But there are a lot of people who are saying that, you know, um, this was the first time they felt something like this. This was an eye opener or it should be an eye opener for, for Vincentians. Uh, you know, I believe at this point, well, it's a little later now. The prime minister was scheduled to give an address to the nation at 730, which was about the same time we started this, this interview. But I'll get caught up on what he says, of course, afterwards. I know he did say that if persons were persons who were able, if they can get to work, he wasn't urging everyone to go out and do, but he was saying the persons, if they can, that they should probably go in. And this of course relates to people in the government service. My, my own brother as a matter of fact, works in the ministry of national mobilization and he was waiting on word from his permanent secretary as into whether or not they need to go out to start to do begin assessments and whatnot. So I haven't been. Our Internet coverage, our data and Internet has been sort of spotty. Um, we, we are without power and we are without water right now. Um, the Internet do get into the, going into last night was really spotty. Um, it's a little bit better at this point now. So I've been kind of, you know, cruising through social media, messaging other persons to find out what's, you know, how. How things are in various places. But I believe, I believe for right now, we are starting to shift into recovery mode, although we still um, have our eyes looked um, set on the east because there's another system that is, was scheduled to come our way probably about tomorrow, if not Thursday. So we. While, while we have. While we have experienced and gone through burial and Beryl is on her way. We are not completely out of the woods yet because there are tens there. There's another system that is headed away. I think it's at a. I'm not sure if it's a wave or a depression at this point.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: But I do know that there's another system that is, that is heading our way, and that's.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: That's the. Definitely not the kind of news you want so soon after the kind of devastation and destruction left by a hurricane barrel for people who may not know of places like Beckwe, and they are as unspoiled and untouched as you could possibly get.
I remember first hearing over Bequia many, many years ago with a colleague who vacationed there, and he was saying that, you know, it's on a plane there, take a boat and go along to the island, and it takes a little while and everything, and that's how far they are. And these smaller islands, when they are hit by this kind of devastation, the impact on them is much greater than when you have a city that has well established infrastructure and that kind of thing. What is needed? We're almost out of time, but what is needed, because I'm sure there's a self reliance that's going to have to kick in, which has kicked in already before you get any kind of assistance from the state, much less from outside. But already there are discussions about assistance. What is needed?
[00:15:12] Speaker C: I'll speak from what I can see and then from what I can imagine, I know that building supplies are definitely going to be required because roofs, a matter of fact, some buildings have been completely demolished.
I will assume that food stuff, necessary items like water would definitely be, be needed. You know, bottle.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Well, it seems as though we've lost our connection.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: To help out each other. So I am. I'm in anticipation that that same thing will happen again here.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Okay.
Just. We missed a bit of what you said was needed, so I'm gonna have to ask you to repeat that.
[00:15:54] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: A call came on, came in on my phone. That's what happens. I ended it quickly. Yes. So I was saying that I was looking at these videos and I can immediately see that building support, some of the things that are definitely going to be required. And I can also work off the assumption that things like foods, food, water, you know, these, these sorts of necessary items are also going to be going to be required. I am anticipating that even folks here on the mainland, while we are in recovery mode here, will probably mobilize and get together even outside of the state entities to give assistance to folks in Union island. Because I'm sure everybody here knows somebody in Union island. You know, even though the islands are spread apart, you know, we all still tightly knit, even as, just because we are all Vincentians at the end of the day. So I'm pretty sure that, you know, things like, as I said, food stuff, building supplies, definitely, because as I said, it looked like, it just looked like a bomb exploded on Union island. The devastation that would, that was there. And I can anticipate things like water and food supplies would be required.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: That's, we're going to have to leave our interview here this morning.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
