Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Hur­ri­cane Beryl has cost To­ba­go $.5 mil­lion in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works since its im­pact two months ago. To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art says re­pairs to homes alone cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $78,000.

In a sit-down in­ter­view yes­ter­day at TEMA’s Ba­co­let head­quar­ters, Stew­art said, “When we look at the over­all cost as of the 16th of last month, we recog­nise that it to­tals $592,000.”

The fig­ure in­cludes $36,350 for catered meals, more than $400,000 for build­ing ma­te­ri­als for re­pairs and $77,691.88 in ham­pers for af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

There were 91 re­ports of fall­en trees, 16 blocked roads, 11 in­stances of struc­tur­al dam­age, and 24 re­ports of dam­aged T&TEC util­i­ty lines.

Stew­art said the Caribbean Cat­a­stroph­ic Risk In­sur­ance Fa­cil­i­ty (CCRIF) made ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.5 mil­lion avail­able.

He said the is­land is now 85 per cent re­stored and pre­dicts that it will take three weeks for out­stand­ing works on dam­aged homes to be com­plet­ed.

From mid­night on June 30 to Ju­ly 1, trop­i­cal-storm-force winds from Hur­ri­cane Beryl af­fect­ed east­ern and north­ern To­ba­go, dam­ag­ing 71 roofs and af­fect­ing 35 peo­ple from eight fam­i­lies. No in­juries or deaths were re­port­ed.

With­in hours of the heavy rain and winds, land­slides and fall­en trees left hun­dreds with­out wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty for two days. A large tree blocked Her­mitage Road, pre­vent­ing ac­cess to Char­lot­teville, the most sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion caused by the strong winds.

Stew­art said there are still 37 homes to be re­paired.

“The dam­age as­sess­ment re­vealed that these homes are not just about putting back on the roofs, so the Di­vi­sion of Set­tle­ment is look­ing in­to those re­ports and treat­ing them in a par­tic­u­lar way,” he ex­plained.

“The di­vi­sion would need to de­cide if these homes need to be de­mol­ished and re­built.”

Eight weeks af­ter the hur­ri­cane’s pas­sage, all that’s left in af­fect­ed ar­eas is dried de­bris from fall­en trees.

A Bloody Bay res­i­dent said he was hap­py the is­land was spared.

“It wasn’t bad for me and my fam­i­ly. We had no cur­rent be­cause some poles fell down the road, but that was about it. We bet­ter say thank God the eye didn’t pass over,” he said.