Desolation Beyond Imagination: Was it you this time?




So here we are again.

Another hurricane season. 

And that tiny Eastern Caribbean island the soil of which was nourished by the humus of my umbilical cord, and known as the 'Nature Isle of the Caribbean', has once again been devastated by a ‘monster’ storm. It's bad this time.

mountainous rainforest, gorges, waterfalls, hot springs,
At some point on Monday 18th September, with maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour and a category 5 storm force, hurricane Maria literally trashed Dominica, the island home of 73,000 people. 

In the early morning of Tuesday 19th September, a hysterical call from my sister woke me; it sent a chill down my spine. Mercifully she was looking on from the safe distance of England, as was I, but we have family in Dominica. The next few hours were spent frantically trying to glean information from anywhere possible. Maria had severed all  communication. Social media, and in this instance Twitter, was particularly useful in highlighting the minimal that was still possible via 'citizen journalism'. The pity of it all: so many posts were begging for any information on named family members, particularly grandparents.

A plea sent directly to the Premier's office a few days post Maria entreated: 

I'm pleading for my elderly grandma and grandpa in ...Up to date no aid has been [sent] .... to them. They have no food and water and are in desperate need and rescue. I can't help as you said no personal barrels to families. Please release this ban so we can help our families please before they starve to death😢😢😢😢😢😢They have lost their entire home. Please help. Please

Within hours a response from the PM's office said: 'we will see to this immediately'. It brought tears to my eyes. When you are a small island community this sort of thing is possible. In any event this particular Premier, Roosevelt Skerrit, is a very special person. Not least because there has been so many prayers offered since Maria for his continued leadership.

However, the tweets and posts (SOS's) from Skerrit in the face of the looming landfall were somewhat disconcerting. “I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane,” he posted on Facebook. “House is flooding.” About 10 minutes later, he posted, “I have been rescued.”  Then silence.   
  
I am not really sure by what act of mercy that later on in the day [19th Sept] another UK-based family member was able to get through for the briefest of conversation with a nephew. The family were safe, but the roof had gone and the damage was extensive.  The full extent of the damage and the number of deaths (approximately 20 at time of writing) is still unknown.
 

literally trashed
It turned out that those of us outside the Island had helpful information to pass on to the family, who were simply isolated for a time, marooned and unable to access the outside world. They had no idea a relatively nearby warehouse was able to distribute foodstuff and a local pharmacy was, mercifully, functioning so the treasured ‘elder’ of the family could get her medication. At least individuals in the Dominican Diaspora could be of some marginal support.  

Further help and support will arrive in due course as the High Commission here is doing sterling work in gathering all those wishing to come to the aid of their ancestral home. It seems a bit surreal though that bottled water is being stockpiled for  delivery to an island with 365 rivers. The gods deal in irony. 
Feelings of intense sadness have been overwhelming for several weeks now as I watch parts of the world go into meltdown, ravaged by the forces of nature.

I found it shocking that, as one commentator said, for the first time in 300 years a Caribbean island  – Barbuda – had its entire population evacuated in the wake of Maria. The island was simply made uninhabitable by Irma, the hurricane immediately before Maria. In this season people lost not just home and livelihood but loved ones - everything that they held dear.

This year’s "disaster" season has been devastating for many around the world. The pain and anguish wrought by the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that, without warning, simply flattened towns and killed at least 250 people in Mexico; the unprecedented level of flooding and deaths in Asia during this year’s Monsoon season. Whilst the southern United States is devastated by water, its more northern regions are being decimated by fire.

Climate experts have long warned of increasing risks of a catastrophe like the occurrence in Puerto Rico:
Puerto Rico after Maria: climate change looks like this
Canadian Greenpeace campaigner, Mark Hudema notes that: of all Cat 5 landfalls on record in the Atlantic since 1851, one-quarter have occurred this season - all generated by Irma and Maria: buff.ly/2hpKsVd


Really? Are you kidding me? Who will it be next time? You? Me? Someone else? For sure a changing climate does not discriminate. We are experiencing an escalation in the ferocity of the forces of nature. Mother Nature seems angry and merciless. The desolation beyond imagination has not yet arrived...we are still at the foothills.

out of control bush fires

Prime Minister Skerrit's address to the UN in the aftermath of Maria was at the same time both heartbreaking and uplifting. But he eloquently put the case for taking meaningful action on climate change. Now. Before that will happen though a few more leaders need to stare into the abyss and have the abyss stare back before they really, really get it. But wait, did that not happen in 2012 with hurricane Sandy, said to be the deadliest and most destructive to hit the United States? Apparently not. 

A rapidly shifting climate is generating a global war zone whilst the most powerful political leaders posture, seek more power and might, and the men in particular (no names necessary) fiddle with their proverbial. When will they wake up? The Island on which I live, the United Kingdom, is itself vulnerable to climate change. How well are we doing in limiting carbon emissions? Well, we are trying but have some way to go to meet the

Paris Agreement.

 

So who cares whether climate change is man made or not; at this point it is an irrelevant conversation and a total waste of time.  Some people get upset when I say that. The inconvenient truth is we no longer have time to debate. It's no longer about who caused it; it is now about resilience of infrastructure and saving human lives by all means possible. 

More than ever it is essential to take immediate steps to put the brakes on the acceleration of climate change, to minimise the devastating impact of brutal weather patterns. Surely it is not beyond us to achieve that. 

Climate scientists speak of a 'tipping point', when the global climate changes from one stable state to another stable state. It is the process of moving from one state to the other had has dire consequences for the mere mortals experiencing that. It is a point of no return. At this point, whatever we do, the momentum long set in motion is unstoppable and at any moment will go over the edge. Skerrit's presentation to the UN's General Assembly speaks to that 'point'; many of us are living right on the edge.  Did it touch you this time?

The various UN conferences on climate change over decades have tried to convince nation states to do all they can to stop the planet heating up beyond a certain degree which would 'push' this tipping point:

Despite Paris Accord, Earth's climate likely to surpass 'tipping point ...

Alas, in the often jeered at words of Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense during the early phases of 'the war against terror', we don't know, what we don't know. That is so true; and the phrase does not belong to Rumsfeld.  He was simply quoting an estoric truth, and he context. Unfortunately, he had no idea.


My own personal quirky view  - nothing to do with science - is that when the planet is ready to take an evolutionary step, climate change as the supreme re-creator of life on earth as we know it, is one of Mother Nature's modus operandi. We may well be part of a civilisation, like the dinosaurs, that is simply wiped out by that shift; or we are part of a civilisation that finds a way to flow with change AND re-imagine a different way of living and being; a kinder more sustainable way of being with each other and with the planet.


                                ~

See related post: The Ecology of Relationships (Jan 2013)

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