Ivan the terrible? Not to us

AS IF man’s inhumanity to man was not dreadful enough, people in many parts of the world must periodically face the devastation of nature’s fury. In the Caribbean and south eastern parts of the United States, the nemesis are the whirling blustery hurricanes that emerge out of the Atlantic and cut a destructive path westward across the region. These monsters seem particularly ruthless since they often strike at the struggling mini-states of the Caribbean which are dependent largely on single-crop agriculture and tourism, two fragile industries that are most susceptible to the ravages of hurricanes. There is hardly an island in the Caribbean which has not suffered severe economic setbacks from the passage of these frightful visitors, together with a toll in lives and property lost.

Undoubtedly the most fortunate, as far as these vicious storms are concerned, is the southernmost island of Trinidad which has never felt the full pulverising force and widespread flooding of these natural terrors. In living memory we can recall only the visit in 1974 of tropical storm Alma which blew off some roofs and flattened some agricultural areas. Indeed, Trinis may well feel that we bear a charmed life since Hurricane Brett, which threatened us with a direct hit in August 1993, veered southwards at the last moment, slipping through the Serpent’s Mouth to devastate Venezuela instead.
    
Tobago, however, has not been so fortunate. As we saw yesterday, the sister isle sustained a heavy glancing blow from Hurricane Ivan which lashed the island for several hours with strong winds and floods, tearing off some roofs, uprooting trees, and pulling down power lines in many areas. Up to evening, when this editorial was being written, Ivan, crawling into the Caribbean in a north westerly direction, was still pounding Tobago. Ivan’s damage will have to be assessed, but it can hardly be as devastating as the handiwork of hurricane Flora which virtually flattened the island on September 30, 1963. Tranquil Moriah was devastated but no town or village was spared the fury of Flora, which also left some 30 Tobagonians dead in its wake. This hurricane’s wreckage was the most destructive natural disaster in Tobago’s recorded history.

Based on the tropical storm warning, Trinidadians took the necessary precautions on Monday, stocking up on well-known emergency items. Yesterday the island assumed an unusual, almost eerie calm as businesses and offices remained closed and most of the population remained indoors listening on the electronic media to Ivan’s progress and hoping that the hurricane would leave our country with minimal damage if not unscathed. Up to yesterday evening, while Tobago was getting a gusty lash from Ivan, Trinidad again emerged untouched by a nearby hurricane.

Trinis may consider themselves fortunate, or even blessed, by this apparent immunity, but the truth is they owe their luck or their “protection” largely to geography; being the most southerly of the Caribbean islands Trinidad is not situated in what is known as the “hurricane belt.” Meteorologists tell us that the waters of the South Atlantic are kept relatively cooler by currents from the Antarctic Ocean and, because of these cooler temperatures, they do not give birth to hurricanes which arise in the warmer expanses of the central Atlantic and move generally north westwards. Still, who can forget the scare we got from Brett which seemed almost guided by Providence to avoid the island which Columbus named after the Trinity?