Grena­da will on Tues­day re­move the state of emer­gency (SOE) for Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique that had been put in­to ef­fect af­ter the is­lands were bat­tered by Hur­ri­cane Beryl when it passed through the Wind­ward Is­lands last Mon­day.

The two is­lands were placed un­der the SOE last Wednes­day with an 11-hour dai­ly cur­few from 7.00 pm (lo­cal time).

Ac­cord­ing to an ex­tra­or­di­nary pub­li­ca­tion of the of­fi­cial Gazette on Mon­day,  signed by Carvel Lett, Sec­re­tary to the Cab­i­net, the  Emer­gency Pow­ers (Hur­ri­cane Beryl) (No 2) reg­u­la­tion will be re­pealed as of Ju­ly 09.

As re­quired by the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Act, the Gov­ern­ment has since de­clared the parish­es of St Patrick and Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique as dis­as­ter zones for three months cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od from Ju­ly 01 to Sep­tem­ber 30,  2024.

“This No­tice shall be deemed to have com­menced at 11:00 a.m. on the 1st day of Ju­ly 2024 and shall ex­pire at 11:59 p.m. on the 30th day of Sep­tem­ber 2024,” said the no­tice which ex­plained that Hur­ri­cane Beryl with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 miles per hour (mph) caused wide­spread dam­age and de­struc­tion to prop­er­ty, phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, the en­vi­ron­ment and crops and loss of hu­man life.

Gov­ern­ment is yet to an­nounce the es­ti­mat­ed cost of the dam­ages.

Mean­while, the An­guil­la gov­ern­ment says it is mak­ing avail­able half a mil­lion EC dol­lars (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) to be di­vid­ed equal­ly be­tween Grena­da and St.Vin­cent and the Grenadines for hur­ri­cane re­lief ef­forts.

“The cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age to Car­ri­a­cou, Pe­tit Mar­tinique, Union Is­land and oth­ers re­minds us of An­guil­la’s plight fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Ir­ma in 2017 and con­firms that glob­al warm­ing and our po­si­tion as Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States in the Caribbean make us in­ter­con­nect­ed, in­ter­re­lat­ed, and mu­tu­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble,” Pre­mier, Dr El­lis Loren­zo Web­ster.

“In An­guil­la’s time of dis­tress and need, the re­gion stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty and came to our aid. It is now our turn to help our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Wind­ward Is­lands. To this end, the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil has ap­proved a fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion of EC$500,000.00 to be di­vid­ed equal­ly be­tween Grena­da and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines for hur­ri­cane re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts,” he added.

ST. GEORGE’S, Grena­da, Jul 8, CMC

CMC/ls/ir/2024