Thursday, March 28

It’s “One Tough Year” As The BVI Struggles To Return to Normal

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Here’s a solid story from The New York Times about how the British Virgin Islands are struggling to recover, one year later, from last fall’s devastating hurricanes.

“A year later,” The Times reports, “the greenery is back, but Tortola’s lush hills are still pocked with houses wreaked by Hurricane Irma’s 178-mph winds. Some are neglected vacation homes…Others were abandoned by residents who fled the island. But many are the homes of those who have struggled to rebuild.”

The BVI suffered  more than $3.6 billion in damages, four times its gross domestic product, in the two hurricanes last fall. It was one of the worst hit, and one of the slowest to restore to normalcy, of the British territories affected, including Anguilla and Turks and Caicos, according to the British government.

The hurricanes severely damaged all major marinas and hotels in the BVI. They destroyed 70 percent of the homes. The Times reports:

“Across the street from the governor’s office in Road Town, the territory’s capital, Dorothy Nibbs spends her days under a mango tree, greeting passers-by and washing clothes by hand in a tub. Hurricane Irma ruined her laundry machines when it blew away the zinc roof and most of the walls of her house.

“She and her husband, Alvin Nibbs, have been living under a temporary tarp that British soldiers strung over the one remaining room of their house last year. The house gets uncomfortably hot without a proper roof and it has little more than two beds, a broken refrigerator and a stove.

“’Terrible, terrible, terrible,’ said Mr. Nibbs, 73, who worked all  his life for the famed Peter Island Resort, which hasn’t opened since the hurricanes. ‘One tough year.’” Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/world/americas/caribbean-hurricane-irma-recovery-tortola.html?login=email&auth=login-email

 

 

 

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