A year after Irma, Antigua evicts Barbudan storm victims from shelter

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua and Barbuda: Dozens of Barbudans were forcibly evicted Saturday from a shelter on neighboring Antigua, leaving them without a home almost exactly a year after powerful Hurricane Irma devastated their island.

Around 40 people – half of them children, the youngest just a month old – were ousted from the National Technical Training Center after police and government officials descended on the building in the capital St John's.

Many had been camped out there since the cataclysmic Category 5 storm powered through the Caribbean early last September, razing homes and infrastructure on Barbuda and prompting most of its population to evacuate to its sister island of Antigua, with the rest following soon after.

The two are the main islands of the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The government said the Barbudans defied two previous deadlines to vacate the school, Antigua's last remaining shelter.

“The school needs to go back to normal operations,” Philmore Mullin, head of the national office of disaster services, told AFP.

“The Barbudans have a responsibility to return home.”

The government said it will foot the bill to ferry the families and their belongings back to the tiny island, 40 miles north of Antigua. Just over half of the former 1,800 refugees have already returned.

But the families, including several single mothers, say they have no homes to go back to.

“We don't have anyone to stay with,” said one, Ionnie Jeffrey. “That's why we are here.”