Even formal communities may have to be moved
THE SUNDAY Gleaner failed to confirm how prevalent the squatting problem was in the sprawling Bull Bay community last week, and efforts to contact MP Juliet Holness – who faced criticism for launching a GoFundMe account to help the affected constituents – were also unsuccessful. Up to Friday, however, almost $200,000 had been donated to the cause.
That information was of little relevance, however, according to Professor Simon Mitchell, a sedimentary geologist and head of the Earthquake Unit at The University of the West Indies, who toured the devastated St Andrew East Rural area with our news team last week.
Born in the United Kingdom, Mitchell has spent 25 years in Jamaica doing research on the geology of the island, including examining major faults in Bull Bay.
Most of the area, he said, is unstable due to several geological forces.
“You are dealing with relatively unstable banks of these river systems. These river systems can
migrate, and if they move, they will take whatever they go through. This is one of the reasons why you have to think about training the rivers properly to try and prevent their migration,” he explained.
But not all sections of the river will be feasible to train, he noted.
“I think it depends on the place. In some places, you may not be able to train the river properly, and in those cases, it might be more feasible to move people – even formal settlements. They don’t always have to be squatters,” he said when asked about the State’s options.
“You see the same sort of thing in coastal defences, where you have places eroding a metre or two a year, and in some cases, it is easier to pay people to move,” he noted.
Mitchell found fault with the inadequate number of tractors cleaning the river, which were at two during our visit, and also with the short distance of the cleaning going upstream as well as the piling of the debris on the riverbanks.
“This only adds to the problems next time,” he argued, a point made by one contractor who blamed poor work by the National Works Agency for the disaster at Bull Bay.
“I have been here all my life and when I was a boy hopping truck, all 40-50 tractors you see in the gully cleaning at one time,” said resident Edwin Brown. “Now, they have two tractors in there and them not moving the things them anywhere so this won’t work.”