Things Brown / Volcano Watch
Publication: Weekend Nation
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 1997
Page: 21
Byline: Terry Ally in Montserrat
DESPITE repeated assurances to the contrary, the Montserratian and British governments continue to come under sharp criticism by the people for their handling of the volcano crisis.
While many people speak privately in their drawing rooms, restaurants, in rum shops and on street corners, few were willing to go public.
One is Leroy "Slim" Daley, a survivor of the deadly pyroclastic flow of June 25, 1997, who said the government had to accept responsibility for the deaths and injury.
Daley, a former government employee, is now a dairy farmer and trucker. He is originally from Bramble Village, in the danger zone.
When the volcano rumbled to life July 18, 1995, his village was classified as a day-only zone which meant he could go in during daylight hours but should not sleep over.
That was because there was a possibility of a pyroclastic flow which gives no warning or makes any sound. Visible sighting is the most effective way to be warned.
The people were asked to go into the safe zones in the temporary shelters, often consisting tents, schools and churches.
But the going was rough because of poor living conditions, poor sanitation and lack of privacy. In addition, families have had to live there for over a year with permanent alternate housing or single units not materialising.
This Daley said was the crux of the problem.
"The shelters are in such poor condition, they are not fit for people to live in any period of time," he told the Weekend Nation.
"As a result of all these things and the difficulty of surviving in the north, some of us decided that the only way to survive is to live back in the east. This is the risk we had to take for our personal survival because there was no help coming from any place.
"Everybody was paying lip service to what was actually happening, everybody was promising everything but nothing was being delivered."
Daley refused to sleep in a shelter but opted to sleep in his car which he said was far more comfortable and convenient than the shelter.
He also complained that when people were rescued, the helicopter crews denied them permission to take any bags on board saying that clothes would be provided at the shelters but when they got there, there were no clothes.
The former government officer wanted to know where was the 25 million pounds sterling in aid which the British government provided.
"I cannot see where anywhere near any of that money has been spent to create houses for the people evacuated.
"People are still shacked up in schools, in churches, in inhuman conditions, in unsanitary conditions. Even if 25 per cent of it was properly spent and spent speedily on housing, which was the greatest need, people wouldn't have died in the east.
"Except for money spent on the observatory and the equipment, money is being spent on new vehicles for the people coming to spend the money."
He also raised eyebrows at the evacuation of animals to a safe haven in Fort Lauderdale while Montserratians were having difficulties obtaining visitor visas, he said.
"Is the emphasis on saving animal lives or human lives?"
Daley does not want to leave his homeland but said that the economy could be revived if all the promises materialised.
Montserratians who took a free ferry ride to Antigua on Sunday had similar complaints.
Claristine Meade, who left the island with her children, was also from Bramble Village and lived in a shelter for 18 months.
Two elderly women, Ann, 70 and her daughter Cabey and their families were evacuated last Saturday from Cork Hill to Brades School in the north.
Mary West, a very pleasant, wrinkled, lonely old lady, sat comfortably on the balcony of the second floor of the school staring at the brown mountain ahead of her. She too has made several trips here.
"I was glad to get out," she said but was kind of sad because she cannot find her husband.
"I don't know where James is, he is all the family I have left, my only child died in England in 1985."
When the evacuation order was given, James had just returned home from the working the land and told her to go on, he would join her later.
Sunday, she returned home for her diabetes tablets and saw him in the village and he promised to go to the shelter later but still has not showed.
"Can you put an announcement on the radio for him to come find me?" she said from her seat. We did.
For a younger Delores Williams, it was her third time also and she was fed up.
"I prefer my home, even though it is in the danger zoneÉ all this up, down, up, down."
She think it is best that the Government moved the people off the island and she would like to leave but has nowhere to go and no money to relocate.
British Under-Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Baroness Liz Symons, during a 24-hour visit to the island, earlier this week, promised that the question of privacy and getting fans into the sweltering shelters would be a priority.
Some one-room, single family wooden homes have been constructed in the northern so-called safe zone along with aluminium buildings that house 17 people each but there were clearly not enough of these permanent houses for the approximate 1 250 still in temporary shelters.