Dennis Richardson: "Our people are the comeback kids"

By Michael R. Granger

PHILIPSBURG--September 5, 1995, is a date which will live on in infamy. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to be on St. Maarten on that date 15 years ago immediately would know, without blinking, what life-changing event took place.

Although St. Maarteners had experienced strong hurricanes prior to 1995, like Fredrick and Donna, nothing prepared residents for Hurricane Luis and the devastation this force of nature wrought.

The enormous Category 4 storm battered, bruised and damaged or destroyed more than 70 per cent of homes and other buildings, laid waste to the electricity and water infrastructure, and permanently scarred residents psychologically. Ten days later, Hurricane Marilyn came along and poured salt in wide-open wounds.

Today, while some persons who did not experience Luis tend to be somewhat complacent with storms, a state of near paranoia takes hold of those who did whenever a tropical system threatens the island.

To which former Lt. Governor Dennis Richardson opined: "Luis left psychological damage in two regards; with the amount of damage that took place and with its wind. The wind was the most frightening thing that our people experienced." He went on to provide an example of how "the wind" has stayed with people for a very long time.

"I remember I was giving a presentation at the Great Bay Beach Resort about two or three years after the hurricane. I had previously made a presentation for a big conference on natural disasters in Amsterdam, and for that occasion we had a recording of the wind of Hurricane Luis. When we played that tape in the Great Bay session, tears were in the eyes of many of our people. To this day, I believe when people experience strong winds, they get really scared because of Luis," he said.

Richardson, through fate or sheer bad luck, successfully guided St. Maarten through seven hurricanes during his tenure as Lt. Governor. Luis prepared him and the people who counted on his leadership for the following six. He would be the first to admit that he too was in a state of shock in the aftermath of Luis.

However, as this 15th anniversary of the storm rolls around, Richardson noted that the resiliency of the people of St. Maarten in those dark times is something which still astounds him today.

"The island has progressed tremendously since devastation of Luis. You have to understand that before the hurricane there were a lot of bad situations on the island at that time and the hurricane made it worse," he recalled. "But what we did is instead of repairing was what damaged, we made great steps forward in our infrastructure, public housing, a very modern port and a beautiful airport. These steps go so gradually you don't even notice. But if you really sit back and think, you will see a lot of improvements have taken place since Luis," he added.

An example often used to indicate how residents rebuilt "better than before" is Ebenezer Estate. To say that Luis flattened this area of largely prefabricated homes would be an understatement. Whole houses went up with the 140-mile-per-hour winds, leaving only open lots. Ebenezer today is a collection of mini concrete mansions and improved surrounding infrastructure that has withstood every hurricane since Luis.

While he thoroughly believes that all sectors of public service deserve credit for the strides forward that have been taken since Luis, Richardson like many others is of the opinion that GEBE, even with its major strides, should have been further along to prevent lengthy outages following a storm.

"We all have the feeling but it's important to point out that GEBE does take advantage of every opportunity there is to place cabling underground. I remember after hurricane Luis I made a 'boo boo' when I called in Julius Lambert (former Managing Director of GEBE) and said Mr. Lambert we are not going to put those cables above ground anymore. Now that they are all down, let's put them underground. Well Mr. Lambert looked at me in amazement and asked 'Mr Richardson do you have an idea how long that would take? How fast do you want to come back? Then I realise I was a little too enthusiastic to have my ideas implemented."

"But I did issue the instruction that wherever there is a new project all cables must be placed underground and that has been happening since then. Both telecommunication companies and GEBE have made great strides forward in that area," he said.

Where GEBE has been a little too slack, he said, was in taking timely initiatives to implement new technologies, improve capacity and purchase engines that are not dependant on sea water to be cooled.

"With energy becoming scarce and prices sky rocketing, it is time we start making use of our natural resources. There should be a program in place for every house to have solar panels and use sun energy, wind energy, geo thermal energy. GEBE needs strategic planning to take the necessary steps so the island is not down for long lengths of time every time a storm hits us," Richardson said.

Electricity to some areas of St. Maarten was restored as late as December 1995.

In the aftermath of Luis, Richardson said, the biggest challenge was the clean-up. "We had widespread destruction so we had mountains of debris. As it took long for electricity to be restored, a lot of restaurants and supermarkets lost stock; we had to dump a lot of rotten food, we had an infestation of flies. Cleaning up island was the one of the biggest challenges. Naturally after that came the reconstruction process, the hotels and our people had to rebuild, that was the second biggest challenge," he said.

He continued: "St. Maarten accomplished this in record time. Of all islands in Caribbean that were affected by Luis, St. Maarten was the first to be back no matter what. Our people are the comeback kids. Not one of those seven hurricanes kept us down.

"After the first initial shock of Luis, everybody rolled up their sleeves and did what they had to do. The built back better than before, they learned their lesson from that experience and you can see with all hurricanes afterward the damage is not as extensive that we had with Luis.

"It's amazing the physical resilience of mind and body that they don't leave these things keep them down. Our representatives went out and brought the people back to the island; after that we had 9/11 that put us in an economic tail spin, and our people continue to fight and move forward. The people of St. Maarten have confidence in themselves, we are better prepared now." Richardson concluded.

Some facts:

Luis was a Category 4 Cape Verde hurricane that wreaked harm and havoc on the north-easternmost of the Leeward Islands, with an estimated sixteen dead and two-and-a-half billion dollars in damages.

Luis was first detected as a tropical wave and circulation of low clouds on 26 August over the far eastern tropical Atlantic between the coast of Africa and the Cape Verde Islands.

Luis strengthened from a depression to a storm on August 29 and quickly became a hurricane one day later. The intensification process continued for the next two days as Luis moved west-north-westward. A reconnaissance aircraft reached the hurricane late on September 3 and confirmed the satellite intensity estimates of a Category 4 hurricane.

The track heading turned from westward to north-westward on September 5 and the hurricane moved across the north-eastern Leeward Islands. The centres passed directly over Barbuda and close enough to the northeast of Antigua, St. Barths, St. Martin and Anguilla that the southern portion of the eye wall affected these islands.

Luis's wind gusts were recorded as high as 165 miles per hour. The rest, as they say, is history.