Parottee residents weigh relocation plan after Hurricane Melissa damage

A possible Government relocation programme has left residents in Parottee, St Elizabeth, weighing safety against the demands of life in a fishing village battered by Hurricane Melissa. Some community members say moving vulnerable households is the sensible response to repeated sea damage, while others say their lives and income are tied too closely to the beach to leave.

The discussion comes after Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness spoke at the National Housing Trust’s presentation of 27 serviced lots in Malvern, also in St Elizabeth. Holness said Parottee could be one of the communities considered for relocation efforts and container-style housing after the destruction brought by Hurricane Melissa last October.

Mary Linton, a fisherfolk from the area, is among those open to the idea. “If you’re living in an area and where your house was devastated, yuh nuh expect say one house ago build back deh,” she said.

Linton, 50, has spent all her life in Parottee, but said Melissa left marks on the community unlike anything she had seen before. She believes some people took Holness’s comments the wrong way, arguing that the prime minister seemed to be speaking about families whose houses were badly damaged and could not reasonably be put back in the same unsafe spots.

“My house never damage but me woulda want him move me. Weh mi experience wid the sea? Me woulda want him move me,” she told THE WEEKEND STAR.

Linton said she understands that relocation could create problems for the fishing trade, but she still thinks residents should look seriously at any chance to live in a safer place. “If yuh have fi move, yuh move. A fi we better and we children and we grandchildren,” she said.

Shernet ‘Nadine’ Linton also believes the danger from future storms is greater than the pull to remain where they are. “Mi nuh wah stay and den one next storm go come and wash we weh,” she said.

The vendor, who works on the Pedro Cays, said erosion has stripped away much of the land that once separated homes and the road from the shoreline. “One time we have over three acres of land from the road to the sea. Yuh see now we barely have nothing because the sea take in a lot of land and house round a back,” she said.

She said the sea now reaches across parts of the road when the tide is high, and harsh weather has become a constant worry for residents. “We nuh used to dah Parottee deh. So if we affi tek the piece a land, mi nuh mind.”

But fisherman Owen Smith said moving inland would make daily life difficult for people who depend on being close to their boats and the water. “We ago feel uncomfortable because normally yuh a fisherman and yuh have yuh boat inna the sea. Yuh get up a nighttime and yuh go circle the beach,” he said.

Smith said fishermen also have to monitor their vessels because boats can be stolen and used to transport drugs. “Yuh have people who thief boat and so fi move drugs, so yuh affi deh near it. It gonna be awkward as a fisherman. I want to be close to my livelihood.”

He said Parottee should not be treated as if it is the only coastal place at risk. “Melissa came in our backyard, so if it went anywhere on the coastline, if it did fi happen, then they too would have felt it,” Smith said. “So you can’t look at just us. It could have happen on the north coast too. We not moving.”