When a hurricane tears through a country, the wind should not be the only thing roaring. The government’s emergency response should be loud, visible, coordinated — a symphony of tents rising, medical units mobilizing, food lines forming, and rescue teams sweeping every corner where fear still sits trembling.
But in Black River, St. Elizabeth, residents say the silence was louder than the storm.
Across the parish, people are alleging that Jamaica’s immediate relief efforts were painfully ineffective. Not delayed. Not understaffed. Ineffective. As in:
no tents,
no structured food program,
no medical stations,
no clear governmental ground game,
and no coordinated system for displaced residents.
Imagine surviving a hurricane only to find that the real emergency begins afterward.
Residents tell us helicopters circled overhead, surveying the destruction from a safe altitude, while families on the ground stood hungry, soaked, and scared, waiting for help that never seemed to land. Children, the elderly, those with chronic illnesses — none were properly accounted for. People slept in damaged homes, in cars, under makeshift tarps, because there was no organized shelter site.
In a disaster, assessment from the sky is not relief on the ground.
Where Was the Emergency Infrastructure?
In best-practice disaster response, essential services should be pre-positioned and deployed immediately:
Emergency tents and tarpaulin shelters
Mobile medical units
Water and sanitation teams
Tracking systems for displaced individuals
Field kitchens and food distribution
Child protection and elderly care stations
Trained personnel coordinating the chaos
Yet residents report that none of this materialized. And crucially — no dedicated relief station was set up in the affected zones.
Instead, word spread through the community that it was private citizens, Jamaican celebrities abroad, and charitable supporters — like Shaggy — who moved faster than the state. They showed up with food, water, supplies, and comfort while the official machinery was still warming up its engines.
Jamaica is a proud nation, but pride doesn’t fill an empty stomach.
Relief Before Rebuilding — Always
Before rebuilding roadways and promising reconstruction contracts, the first order of national duty is human stabilization.
That means:
Shelter
Food
Water
Medical care
Sanitation
Safety
Psychological support
Accurate accounting of displaced persons
After that — and only after that — do you begin the work of reconstruction.
Residents in Black River say they were leapfrogged straight to “assessment” without ever receiving Phase One: Immediate Relief.
It’s like checking the foundation before checking if people are alive inside.
So What’s Going On?
It’s the question rumbling through WhatsApp chats, community meetings, radio call-ins, and roadside conversations:
Why was there no rapid response?
Where were the tents?
Where were the mobile clinics?
Where were the boots on the ground?
And why did it take celebrities to do what the government should have done on Day One?
We don’t yet have a full answer — but we do have a full picture painted by the people living it. And their picture is not flattering.
A storm hit them once.
The system hit them twice.
A Call for Accountability and Action
This moment is bigger than Black River. It’s about the national emergency-response blueprint, the gaps in planning, and the lived experience of Jamaicans who feel abandoned when disaster strikes.
This is an invitation — or rather, a demand — for:
Transparent explanation from government agencies
Rapid deployment of delayed relief
Public mapping of shelters and services
Medical and sanitation units on site
Assessment teams walking the streets, not flying above them
A published timeline of the government’s response
Oversight from civil society groups
A comprehensive, modernized disaster-response plan
Because if we cannot protect our people in the first 48 hours after a hurricane, then we are not protecting them at all.
Black River is not asking for luxury.
They are asking for humanity.
And as one resident put it, standing beside a damaged home and an untouched food bin:
“We survived the hurricane. We just didn’t survive the waiting.”
By Rev. Renaldo McKenzie, Editor-in-chief, The NeoLiberal Journals at The NeoLiberal Corporation
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