Hurricane Iota remains a nightmare for residents of Providencia, a 17-square-kilometer island of Colombia in the Caribbean Sea now struggling to recover from its ravages.
The owner of a supermarket washes merchandise she could save after the passage of Storm Iota, in Providencia, Colombia, on Nov 22. [NATHALIA ANGARITA/REUTERS]
Keysi Hawkins, born and raised in Providencia and now living in France, said: "It was a horrible moment. Four days passed without (me) knowing anything about my family (in Providencia) … I've never experienced such a thing before."
Iota was the first ever Category 5 hurricane to hit Colombia as well as other Caribbean countries, on Nov 17. Providencia was totally blacked out and for most of the day out of contact with the outside world.
Earlier in the month, the category 4 Hurricane Eta hit Colombia and Nicaragua among others in the region and killed hundreds, and hundreds remain missing, after mudslides and flooding devastated mountainous villages. About 300,000 people fled their homes.
"The damage caused by Hurricane Eta was immeasurable, and we had not recovered from it when Iota struck," said Luz Marina Livingston, a local journalist in Providencia. The island is closer to the shores of Nicaragua and home to about 5,900 people.
Iota was the 30th named storm this season. The intense storm season has exacerbated the economic damage from COVID-19-related lockdowns and underlined the dangers of climate change.
The hurricanes hit many countries, including Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and the south of Mexico.
Hurricane Iota was downgraded by the time it hit Nicaragua but still claimed the lives of at least 28 people in that country, another 16 dying in Honduras.
By Thursday the death toll from Iota across the region stood at 61, and 41 people were missing.
People across the Caribbean are struggling to recover from the one-two blow. In San Andres, an island 93 km from Providencia and the largest in the archipelago, infrastructure was devastated, Colombia's President Ivan Duque putting the extent of the destruction at 99 percent.
Rebuilding will not be easy.
"We have been talking about a 100-day reconstruction plan," Duque said. "Maybe it will take us a little longer, but the important thing is that in the first 100 days of intervention we have humanitarian aid and solutions delivered to the most affected families."
Leaders from across the region said they will work together to pressure richer countries to make aid available quickly through development banks and agencies.
"We in Central America are not the ones who caused climate change, but we are among the most affected," said President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras.
People will spend the next few months or even years searching for missing people and rebuilding their lives. The world has come forward to help with cash and technical expertise, China being among the donors, committing to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid.
Timely aid
"From the People's Republic of China, we express our condolences to the Colombian people for the recent climatic catastrophes," China's embassy in Bogota said on Nov 20. "To help, we confirm a donation from the Chinese Red Cross of $100,000 in assistance to the country."
The announcement from the embassy followed another by Colombia's Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Echeverri after a meeting with China's Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang as part of the celebration of 40 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
"During the virtual meeting, Zheng expressed his solidarity with Colombia for the disasters caused by the winter emergency, mainly in the Archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, and announced a cash donation of $500,000 from his government," Colombia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a news release.
The money will be welcome, given that the hurricanes may have caused damaged worth $400 million throughout the region.
In Providencia, people say they hope they will have a say on how rebuilding is undertaken, after an island rebuilding policy drafted in Bogota, the Colombian capital, was poorly received.
"We want to call on the government to plan in an organized way the actions to be carried out in the islands so that they become long-term solutions," the Old Providence Civic Oversight Movement said.
"We call for the participation of the civil, scientific and technical community in the reconstruction plan because it is essential that the bioclimatic conditions of our archipelago and our ancestral culture are taken into account."
Livingston, the journalist in Providencia, agreed, saying: "We don't want designs unrelated to our culture and our traditions. I would like to think that this hurricane is giving us a chance to start over, which means doing things the right way."
The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.