Hurricane Beryl has brought significant damage to a few communities in Jamaica and it passed south of the island. 

If it had travelled across the island like Hurricane Gilbert, then it would have had a devastating impact, as it would mean that you could apply that devastation to most, if not all parishes. If it had even come 10 miles further inland, then St Catherine and St Andrew, with the largest population, would have been dealt a severe blow. 

The impact would have been way more than just the damage caused on the day but the significant cost of living increase, significant rebuilding costs (which could put persons into further debt), and reduced income as persons may have lost jobs if businesses had to close, possibly more loss of life, etc.

Already, with St Elizabeth hit so hard we will see food inflation. The country will recover and it will be more difficult for individuals.

This highlights the need for us to develop greater resilience as the best solution to dealing with natural disasters. The fact is that, just like death,  hurricanes and other natural disasters will come and we never know when. What we know though is that it is certain. 

What we know also is that we cannot totally remove the personal impact. So, when a hurricane is coming we may be able to relocate to a different location, but your house cannot move. You will also be affected by food and other price increases and by electricity, water and telecoms disruption. 

It means that the best approach is to build resilience, as a country but more importantly, individuals need to do this. Perhaps, instead of borrowing money to buy a car, borrow to build greater resilience at home, which is protecting your assets. The National Housing Trust (NHT), for example, has a loan for solar setup, which will assure you electricity throughout and after the hurricane, and will also send down your costs. 

Personally, right throughout the hurricane, I had electricity, internet and water. And so after the storm passed the only thing I had to do was clean up outside and put back what was stored to protect them from the winds. 

The challenge is that I was unable to get in touch with many because they lost all the utilities  What this means is that if we need to get back to normal as quickly as possible then this resilience must be widespread, or else productivity will be impacted.

Jamaica’s GDP for 2024 is estimated at J$3.2 trillion (or J$8.6 billion per day).

So for each day we have no activity we lose J$8.6 billion and if we take time to get back to full production we lose a portion of that daily GDP (gross domestic product). So if it takes us a week to get back to full production and we lose 50 per cent productivity, we would have lost J$30.1 billion, which is income for persons. The government would have lost close to J$8 billion in taxes, which means social services and capital expenditure could be delayed. 

With the impact of climate change, we can expect that hurricanes will get more intense, and even many modern roofs may have been built for a Category 3 hurricane. So as individuals and the wider Jamaican society as a whole, we need to start putting measures in place to make the country more resilient, or we will face greater personal and national losses. Spend the money now or it will end up costing us a lot more later.