AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

“I am now the Arch­bish­op of a rav­aged city which looks like the cities of Eu­rope at the end of World War II,” Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain An­tho­ny Pan­tin said in a ser­mon days af­ter the 1990 coup at­tempt end­ed.

It was the unimag­in­able made re­al. The Ja­maat al Mus­limeen’s at­tempt to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment stunned the na­tion, leav­ing cit­i­zens strug­gling to process the un­prece­dent­ed at­tack un­fold­ing be­fore their eyes. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, how­ev­er, a par­al­lel cri­sis emerged as the na­tion’s cap­i­tal trans­formed in­to a the­atre of law­less­ness and a show­case of self-de­struc­tion.

A city un­der siege

The first act of the night­mare be­gan on Ju­ly 27 in Port-of-Spain, when Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr stormed Par­lia­ment at the Red House, tak­ing mem­bers and staff hostage. Abu Bakr then seized con­trol of Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) and an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment had been over­thrown, ask­ing the na­tion to re­main “calm.”

But an­oth­er bat­tle was un­fold­ing in the streets of the cap­i­tal. A once-thriv­ing busi­ness dis­trict rapid­ly de­volved in­to a land­scape of dev­as­ta­tion.

Loot­ing and de­struc­tion con­sume down­town

Loot­ers de­scend­ed up­on com­mer­cial ar­eas, strip­ping busi­ness­es bare of every­thing from gro­ceries to ap­pli­ances.

As se­cu­ri­ty forces fought with all their might to sub­due the bud­ding in­sur­rec­tion, down­town busi­ness­es were left en­tire­ly vul­ner­a­ble to theft and ar­son. Thick smoke blan­ket­ed the skies. It was caused not on­ly by the bombs and boo­by traps set by the rad­i­cal ex­trem­ist group, but al­so by fires lit by loot­ers seek­ing to con­ceal their crimes in the chaos.

Hen­ry Street be­came one of the defin­ing im­ages of the cri­sis. Wit­ness­es de­scribed the ram­pant loot­ing there as a “mi­ni car­ni­val.” Crowds flood­ed the de­bris-filled streets, ready to climb through shat­tered store­fronts. While their ac­com­plices wait­ed on the pave­ment, oth­ers in­side tossed mer­chan­dise from the up­per floors. Count­less items were passed hand to hand in an iron­ic dis­play of ca­ma­raderie.

Tele­vi­sions, re­frig­er­a­tors, fur­ni­ture (in­clud­ing en­tire liv­ing and bed­room sets) and cloth­ing van­ished in­to wait­ing ve­hi­cles. Truck­loads of stolen goods rolled through the city as one busi­ness af­ter an­oth­er was gut­ted, leav­ing noth­ing but rub­ble show­cased in the dis­play win­dows.

The burn­ing of Queen Street

Queen Street suf­fered the great­est hor­ror and dev­as­ta­tion. When there was noth­ing left to steal, build­ings were set ablaze. Savi­ta Beat­rice, then own­er of the Mod­ern Busi­ness School and the Keep-Fit Cen­tre, told the Trinidad Guardian in 1990 that she es­ti­mat­ed her loss­es at more than $200,000.

Her gym, like many neigh­bour­ing struc­tures, went up in flames with­out even be­ing loot­ed, prov­ing that to­tal de­struc­tion did not come sole­ly from thieves. At the time, jour­nal­ist Kr­ishen­daye Ram­per­sad de­scribed the cap­i­tal’s streets, in­clud­ing Char­lotte Street, Fred­er­ick Street and In­de­pen­dence Square, as “the bat­tle-scarred re­mains of Beirut [Lebanon],” re­flect­ing the se­vere scale of the ru­in.

Busi­ness­man Joe Elias, of Nag­ib Elias and Sons Ltd, es­ti­mat­ed that the to­tal dam­age across the city would run well over one bil­lion dol­lars. But he shared an­oth­er fear with re­porters. “We don’t know if in­sur­ance will cov­er it.”

One of the few places left en­tire­ly un­touched was the Peo­ple’s Mall. Stretch­ing from Fred­er­ick Street to Hen­ry Street, it mirac­u­lous­ly es­caped the wide­spread loot­ing that en­gulfed sur­round­ing prop­er­ties.

The world watch­es Port-of-Spain col­lapse

The cri­sis drew glob­al at­ten­tion. The who’s who of in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions flood­ed the coun­try dur­ing its brief and dark mo­ment of col­lapse. Cor­re­spon­dents from ABC News, CNN, The New York Times, ITV and many oth­ers ar­rived in Port-of-Spain armed with cam­eras and satel­lite equip­ment. Some re­porters not­ed that while they had wit­nessed more dra­mat­ic bat­tle­fronts in Beirut, Pana­ma and Nicaragua, the com­pact size of Trinidad’s cap­i­tal made the con­cen­trat­ed de­struc­tion ex­cep­tion­al­ly glar­ing.

Wit­ness­es re­marked that Park Street, Aber­crom­by Street and the stretch be­tween Pem­broke and George Streets re­sem­bled a war film where a bomb had just dropped. This com­par­i­son was fit­ting, as the vi­o­lence ex­tend­ed far be­yond re­tail theft.

Fear spreads as se­cu­ri­ty forces bat­tle for con­trol

For cit­i­zens, dai­ly rou­tine be­came a mat­ter of nav­i­gat­ing a heavy, fright­en­ing mil­i­tary pres­ence as forces worked to re­gain con­trol of the cap­i­tal. Dan­ger was every­where. On that first day of the coup at­tempt, Po­lice Head­quar­ters came un­der at­tack. A car packed with ex­plo­sives was dri­ven to­wards the build­ing on Sackville Street.

As it ap­proached the en­trance, shots rang out. The at­tack­ers aban­doned the ve­hi­cle and opened fire with Uzi sub­ma­chine guns, rid­dling the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment’s front of­fice with bul­lets just be­fore the car det­o­nat­ed. In mere sec­onds, parts of the head­quar­ters caught fire from the blast, mak­ing it clear that nowhere in the cap­i­tal was safe. This was es­pe­cial­ly true when, just as at the Red House dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, dead bod­ies were trag­i­cal­ly left on the streets for days.

As you can imag­ine, any dri­ver or pedes­tri­an car­ry­ing a bag was treat­ed as a pre­sumed threat.

Six days of chaos and the long road to re­cov­ery

The chaot­ic days dragged on. Sol­diers oc­cu­pied the Guardian and Ra­dio 610 build­ings, ex­chang­ing heavy gun­fire with at­tack­ers from the rooftops. These bat­tles rid­dled the struc­tures with bul­let holes while re­porters camped in­side, brave­ly con­tin­u­ing to cov­er the six-day cri­sis. Amid the tur­moil, the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal man­aged to en­dure.

Med­ical per­son­nel re­mained at their posts for days on end, prov­ing well equipped to treat ca­su­al­ties while con­stant­ly brac­ing for more.

When the six-day siege fi­nal­ly drew to a close, law en­force­ment launched mas­sive op­er­a­tions to re­cov­er stolen prop­er­ty. More than 200 po­lice of­fi­cers de­scend­ed on the Beetham Es­tate in co­or­di­nat­ed raids, ar­rest­ing 76 res­i­dents and re­cov­er­ing $5 mil­lion worth of stolen goods.

As sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed, the lure of loot­ing had spared no one. Even some sol­diers were ar­rest­ed for aid­ing in the theft of house­hold items and sport­ing goods.

Re­build­ing a shat­tered cap­i­tal

In a for­mal ad­dress to the na­tion, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an stat­ed that the cri­sis had “test­ed our met­tle on every front.”

He an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved im­me­di­ate plans for de­mo­li­tion, site clear­ance, re­hous­ing the po­lice ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­lo­cat­ing dis­placed ven­dors and re­build­ing a safer, more or­der­ly cap­i­tal.

This di­rec­tive prompt­ed one of the largest clean-up ex­er­cis­es in the city’s his­to­ry. By Au­gust 6, bull­doz­ers rolled through down­town, clear­ing moun­tains of twist­ed steel, bro­ken glass and ash as the city was forced to awak­en from its night­mare.

Port-of-Spain May­or Au­gus­tus Williams re­mained re­silient, firm­ly re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions that the city had been de­stroyed for­ev­er. The city, he in­sist­ed, had sur­vived cat­a­stroph­ic fires and his­tor­i­cal dis­as­ters be­fore. But he clung to hope and the fact that “it must and will rise again.”

Even as the smoke slow­ly lift­ed from Port-of-Spain’s skies, the over­whelm­ing de­struc­tion left be­hind seemed im­pos­si­ble to re­cov­er from. But Arch­bish­op Pan­tin of­fered com­fort in that very same post-coup ser­mon:

“The task of re­build­ing is ex­treme­ly daunt­ing. To some it may ap­pear even im­pos­si­ble. But we know, dear sis­ters and broth­ers, that to God all things are pos­si­ble.”