SAN PEDRO DAILY, August 23, 2007,Belize,News,Features,Newspapers,Information,Resource,Caribbean,Ambergris Caye

North takes a glancing blow but most of Belize dodges Dean

Hurricane Dean is now history ... for Belize at least, and the story tonight is not what Dean did ... but what it didn’t do. Considering that the monster category five storm, packing one hundred and sixty-five mile per hour winds, made landfall just north of Chetumal, we would not have been surprised to hear this morning that half our country was on its knees. In fact, while the Corozal and Orange Walk Districts, along with San Pedro, did suffer some selective damage, there was no loss of life and those affected communities should bounce back quickly. Today News Five’s crews were out assessing damage and looking for the human side of the story. But first, we travelled to the Ladyville headquarters of the National Meteorological Service where Acting Chief Meteorologist Ramon Frutos offered News Five’s Kendra Griffith a recap of Dean’s brush with Belize.
Ramon Frutos, Acting Chief Met. Officer
“South of the eye where it made landfall, that is the Chetumal area and the Corozal town area and adjacent villages of the Corozal district, definitely they experienced some very high winds, probably with gusts in excess of ninety knots in some cases. We did receive a report of some gusts of a hundred knots in northern Corozal. ... As you move further south, for example here at the airport and in the Belize City area, we were experiencing wind speed of thirty-eight miles per hour or forty miles per hour at times here from the west and the southwest around that time also.”
“The damage in the Belize City area was not that significant and also as you can recall, we were expecting quite a lot of rain associated with this system also and that did not really materialise totally, even though we got some torrential downpour. If you can recall around two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning Belize City was getting some heavy rainfall. The same thing was happening here and in the northern part of the country. However, because of the fast movement of this system across the coastline and inland, most of the shower activity was short-lived. This was already anticipated from Sunday night and we were indicating in some interviews that yes, the impact could be very strong, catastrophic, but it will be very short lived and that’s what happened in the case of the rainfall. ... So the flash flooding that we were expecting, for example, the pooling of water in the Belize City area producing local flood conditions in the low lying areas of Belize City and the highways leading out of Belize City did not really materialise because the rainfall that we were expecting for Belize City did not occur. However in the northern part of the country, yes, they continued to experience quite a lot of rainfall. It’s possible that some areas did have some flooding, but not life threatening.” Read More

Charles Woods Sr.: Dead at 72

Charles Woods Senior, who succumbed to a massive heart attack on Saturday morning. Funeral arrangements, complicated by the threat of Hurricane Dean, have now been set for Friday afternoon at three at Holy Redeemer Cathedral. Woods was a long time executive in the insurance industry and was very active in civic and church affairs. In recent years, he increasingly turned his attention to agriculture, expanding his holdings in the Stann Creek Valley and spending significant time developing his farm off the Hummingbird Highway. Although it is not widely known, Woods was one of two people who shared the top prize for the naming of the new capital, Belmopan. He is survived by his wife Edith Nella Woods nee Rogers, daughters Jackie, Silvana, Charlene, Debbie, Jenny, Melanie and Valerie and son Charles Junior, better known as Chuck. Charles Woods: dead at the age of seventy-two. Read More

BEL Restores Power to O/W & San Pedro

One universal concern throughout the storm affected area is electricity. Corozal was plunged into a blackout at midnight on Monday and the entire district is still without power. But there is some good news tonight. BEL expects to energize the transmission line tomorrow, and with that, power will be restored to a few customers. But still, because of the broad expanse of downed lines, the utility will need two weeks to restore full service. San Pedro Town is not that difficult, and tonight, BEL is reporting that it has restored power to 90% of that island town. Orange Walk was energized last night and power has been restored to 80% of that town. The district should be fully restored by next week. Read More

NEMO Explains Its Plan to Help
Storm Victims

And while food distribution is a concern, for those in shelters, NEMO today told the press it has it under control. 5 ground and 3 aerial teams spent most of today doing assessments – some of it house to house - as they tried to put a dollar amount on Hurricane Dean’s destruction. That figure isn’t available yet but it should be by tomorrow. At a press conference this afternoon at NEMO headquarters in Belmopan, Chairman of the Damage Assessment Committee Allan Usher says lampposts were toppled, trees were uprooted, and homes were destroyed – and the only good news in all that says Usher is that the damage to the macro-infrastructure was minimal.
Allan Usher, Chairman – Damage Assessment Committee
“The macro-infrastructure is largely untouched. The major highways, little bit of flooding; bridges, hardly any damage; but most of the damage was inflicted on the population. A high number of homes in the villages in Orange Walk and Corozal Districts as well as a few in San Pedro.
So a lot of damage to people’s homes, a lot of damage to subsistence crops, and to the feeder and farm roads, for people to access those crops, as well as to certain parts of the productive sector. As yet unascertained is the damage to the sugar cane industry, there’s been uprooting of some of the plants. Almost all the papaya production is lost and as yet unspecified and in response to a question from over there, we still don’t know the damage to the grain crops.” Read More

NOTICES/LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

All parents of registered Holy Cross Anglican School students are required to attend the parent/teacher conference on August 26 at 2 pm.

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