While the risk of hurricane seems better taken into consideration during the recovery process, it is not the case of all types of natural hazards. As shown earlier, the measures taken for reducing the risk of disaster linked to hurricane have increased because of a better awareness of the risk and because of its high frequency of occurrence. The other hazards being more uncertain in terms of timing and intensity, they are put in conflict with other priorities and are less taken into consideration. The development of the four neighborhoods illustrates some of the tensions and obstacles for sustainable development and disaster risk reduction.
As said previously, the relocation in the north helps reducing the risk of disaster linked to volcanic hazards. However some neighborhoods, including Salem, are located in zones A
and B of the exclusion zone, which means that they are could be exposed to heavy ash fall in the event of another phase of eruption (MVO et al., 2011). Salem has been highly affected by ash falls several times between 1996 and 1998, with some fragile roofs collapsing under the weight. Between five and ten centimeters of ash fell on the village in 1995 (Searl, Nicholl, &
Baxter, 2002). Although one can presuppose that the proximity of Salem with the volcano and the recent experience of ash falls could encourage households to be better prepared to volcanic hazards, the development of Salem since 1995 does not reflect a perception of high risk. It faces multiple conflicts of interests, where risk of disaster is not seen as a priority.
5.2.2.1. Risk perception in zone A
On the one hand, policy-makers and residents of Salem often argue that the area is safe.
They justify this by highlighting the fact that the volcano is closely monitored by the MVO, by the fact that the village is out of zone V (the area totally excluded from occupation) and by the lack of volcanic activity since 2010.
Moreover the low frequency of volcanic activity and the quietness since 2010 may appear to justify a decrease in concern. A disaster manager explained in January 2016:
“[the volcano] doesn’t impact every day and that is the main reason [why we are not worried], but the impact is great, but the risk presently… […] before the volcano erupted in 1995, there was three measurements that were used, and all three went off. Now two, one is red and one is green, so there is a possibility that it might [erupt again] but presently there has no official word… so the risk associated with it remains low […] so you have a low priority [for preparing to volcanic hazards].”
The inhabitants use similar arguments to justify the fact that they do not take any specific measures to prepare in case of eruption, even if they seem to be aware of their proximity with the volcano and of their higher exposure than the rest of Montserrat. A Dominican (DR) man living in Salem for several years explained in April 2015 during an interview:
“We have to accustom to live with that reality. So, I don’t think we need to worry too much about that. Because we live in here and we depend on that you know. We think that God is in control and whenever happens, everybody is in the same situation.” (Interview in April 2015)
The development of Salem without greater consideration of the risk of ash falls than in the other areas of Montserrat illustrates the paradoxes in the risk perception and obstacles for
“building-back-better”. I develop this further in the Chapter 7 in order to analyze the impacts it has on the recovery processes.
5.2.2.2. Lack of investments and maintenance in a vulnerable area
While the Physical Development Plan reports: “Where areas are at perceived risk from volcanic activity, such as Salem and its immediate vicinity, it is important to support social and economic development, making these areas vibrant and attractive places to live and to do business” (GoM, 2012b, p.78), Salem suffers from a clear lack of maintenance and investments. Currently, that is illustrated by the lack of infrastructures such as roads in good condition, lack of public lights, and lack of connection of several dwellings to water supply.
The area faces also a relatively higher level of social problems, linked as shown previously, to a lack of consideration.
The lack of physical investments and maintenance of Salem has important consequences on the vulnerability of residents, mainly to volcanic hazards, but also to the other hazards that can affect the area, including earthquakes, hurricane and landslides. In 2015, by establishing a Vulnerability and Capacities Analysis, the Red Cross identifies a major problem of access to houses, due to the lack of roads and the bad conditions of those existing. Public buses are also not regular in that area and go there only if they are asked to do so, despite of the fact that it is an area where many residents do not own their private vehicle. A manager of the Red Cross underlined this during an interview in January 2016:
“The population there, most of them work as [house] cleaners and construction workers, they don’t drive. [They are] non-nationals, Spanish, Haitians and Dominicans. So they didn’t drive and they used that passage [talking about a
narrow path] to go to and from work. Sometimes late at night, it was dark without light, the road was very bad. Surfaces were very very bad.”
Through advocacy of Red Cross on behalf of inhabitants of a neighborhood of Salem, a road has been opened in 2016 to facilitate the evacuation of the population in case of emergency and to allow for safer daily commuting between work and home.
A lack of maintenance of the abandoned houses has also been reported, leading to hygiene issues (Figure 5.10). It is closely linked to the rapid evacuation of the inhabitants during the volcanic crisis. Most house owners are now living abroad, and the tenants often do not have the financial capacities and the willingness to maintain the houses. Moreover, a small number of temporary shelters built for displaced people after the first evacuations were not planned to be maintained for about 20 years and are not considered as suitable in such an environmental context, despite remaining inhabited today (Figure 5.11). The lack of management and maintenance of Salem not only contributes to stigmatize its residents and prevent their integration at the national scale, as we have seen earlier, it also prevents their adequate physical preparedness to hazards.
Figure 5.10: Abandoned house in Salem, causing sanitary problems (Charlotte Monteil, 2016)
Figure 5.11: Social houses in Salem, built as temporary initially but that have become permanent. There is a plan to destroy them and move the tenants to stronger and more comfortable apartments in Davy Hill by 2020 (Charlotte Monteil, 2016)
While the objective of building-back-better and decreasing the vulnerability to disaster is clearly mentioned in the Sustainable Development Plan developed by the GoM (GoM, 2002, 2010), these objectives are in tension with the post-disaster change and short-term needs. As shown previously, the demographic transformation of the territory has gradually led to a greater occupation of Salem by immigrant communities. It is estimated that in 2016, about half of the population of Salem was immigrants, making Salem the area with proportionally the least number of Montserratians. For this reason, Salem is often qualified as a less attractive village than Cudjoe Head or Lookout for instance. It is difficult to assess how the demographic change of the area and its gradual association with immigrant communities, that is to say people who are perceived to stay only for short-term, discourage investments.
Despite of the high level vulnerability of the residents of Salem, the fact that they are immigrants and therefore, supposedly only passing by Montserrat for a few years, is expressed by the policy-makers as a limit for investment, especially for the maintenance of the road network and for public infrastructure. A common discourse is that investments for immigrant communities are lost investments for Montserrat, as immigrants are not expected to stay more than a few years. However, no statistical data is available to support this idea. Although it is true that a number of them rapidly leave Montserrat, in order either to go back to their place of origin or to go to the UK once they are naturalized British citizens, a large number of immigrants remain in Montserrat for long periods, up to almost two decades for some of them.
There is a conflict here between the willingness to make valuable long-term investments, to
promote first the Montserratian population and to decrease the level of vulnerability to natural hazards of the residents of the Island.
The lack of investment in Salem also reveals that despite the common discourses arguing that it is safe, policy-makers still fear the uncertainty related to the volcanic hazard.
The proximity of the village with the volcano is often mentioned as a major factor for limiting investments. They are considered as too risky, being potentially useless if the volcano was to erupt again, and considering the disinterestedness of Montserratians for these lands.
The Physical Development Plan highlighted in 2012 this issue: “A significant constraint is the reduced access to finance and insurance as banks and insurance companies provide very limited services at the expense of significant collateral in other locations north of Nantes River. Furthermore, the reluctance of GOM and DFID to fund infrastructure in this area is constraining development and discouraging people from investing in the area […] Road condition and capacity also hinder access to many local areas, particularly in Hope and Flemings [two neighborhoods of Salem (Editor’s note)]” (GoM, 2011, p.159). While financial resources are rather invested in areas perceived as safer, that contributes at the same time to maintain a low level of attractiveness to the area and a high level of vulnerability to natural hazards.
The uncertainty and the demographic transformation of the area therefore tend to prevent investment in the area, while its occupation, increasing in the meantime the vulnerability of its inhabitants, already relatively more disadvantaged than the other communities.
5.2.2.3. Emergency response: conflict between short and long-term needs The whole Island is prone to diverse natural hazards including hurricanes, earthquake and landslides (see Chapter Four). We have seen previously that the redevelopment of the north has been the opportunity to pay more attention to the housing in order to improve the resistance to hurricanes. However all neighborhoods and all houses do not benefit from the same consideration. Despite a relatively high level of awareness about hurricane risks, different priorities, for instance reducing the risk of disaster and providing a house for
everyone, compete with each other. In 1997 while rehousing the displaced people was urgent, about 50 pre-fabricated houses were built in Davy Hill and a few in other neighborhoods such Salem. Supposed to be temporary, these shelters did not aim to be hurricane-proof or earthquake-proof but just to respond to the emergency of rehousing. In a compressed-time, the rapidity of the response is often privileged over the quality of the response (Olshansky et al., 2012). Twenty years after, a large number of these houses are still present in several areas.
In Davy Hill, the temporary houses (Figure 5.12) are an important concern both for the residents and for the government, as explained by a leader of the Davy Hill Community Action Group. It is difficult to replace these houses as the financial capacities of the government are limited and other measures becomes more urgent. An officer of the housing department explains that although housing is a priority, rehabilitating the temporary shelters of Davy Hill is complicated as it requires sufficient funding and a transition period when people would have to be relocated in another house or apartments. That is made difficult by the general shortage of houses on the island. Inhabitants of Davy Hill explain that the government sold the houses for a low price to the people living there, transferring the responsibility of maintaining or replacing the house to the individuals. In 2013, the Premier Ruben Meade explained to the journalist of The Montserrat Reporter:
“Government does not have the money to fix the houses, neither can we continue the maintenance cost, the maintenance costs are high, which is why we want to work with the people to provide for them the concessionary financing so they can do the necessary improvements.”
Figure 5.12: Social and temporary houses in Davy Hill, built for the evacuated people and not hurricane or earthquake-proof (Charlotte Monteil, 2016)
A group of houses in Lookout face similar issues (Figure 5.13). In 2013, Donaldson Romeo - then leader of the opposition and now Premier - pointed out, “serious concerns on the state of the houses and their vulnerability to hurricane and earthquakes. These houses have long since proved to be quite unsuitable to climatic conditions” (Roach, 2013, 2014). While external donations were supporting the emergency needs during the disaster, the lack of long-term planning and anticipation reveals to be a major issue as the additional expenses need to be done. The rapid answer to the need of rehousing people therefore hampers the capacity to build back better and to reduce the risk of disasters despite of the risk awareness. The case of Davy Hill also demonstrates the importance of the immediate response to disaster on the long-term recovery, as it shapes and delong-termines what will be done afterwards. It appears more difficult, possibly more costly, to upgrade the emergency investments than to make long-term investments immediately.
Figure 5.13: Houses in Lookout, built for displaced people, and causing concerns related to their vulnerability to earthquake and hurricane (Roach, 2014)
5.2.2.4. Lack of resources to adapt to rapid change
Although the risk of hurricane is usually considered when rebuilding, other risks perceived as less probable, such as the risk of earthquake, are often not considered due to cultural habits, from a lack of resources and a lack of measures for adapting to the new context.
In Lookout, Cudjoe Head and Davy Hill, all recently built, the risk of earthquake is neglected, both at the private and at the public level. For instance, the pre-fabricated houses, used for relocating people after the evacuation of the south and now used as social housing, do
not respect the basic rules of engineering to face earthquakes (Figure 5.13). At the private level, the same issue is noticed. One disaster manager said in January 2017 that:
“People don’t apply the building code. They are not interested in it. They prefer to have a bigger house than a stronger one. Most of the houses don’t respect the building code at least for earthquake.”
He took the example of a new building, used as a shop, in Cudjoe Head (Figure 5.14), that is built on a steep slope, on irregular and unstable pillars, similarly as several houses all over Montserrat. A large number of new houses are multi-story, with the top floor used first and no infills between the columns of the ground floor, making them very unstable in case of earthquake.
Figure 5.14: A new building in Cudjoe Head which is not earthquake-proof ( Charlotte Monteil, 2016)
Different reasons are presented to explain the lack of consideration of this risk in rebuilding. They include cultural and practical reasons. Multi-story houses are an expression of wealth. But when the household does not have the financial capacity to build directly several floors, they prefer building first the first floor and fill the ground floor later, as it is considered easier and less expensive than building above the existing house. The consequence is that houses often remain on pillars, without infills between the columns, making them unstable and vulnerable to earthquakes.
Moreover, the topography and the availability of land often limits the options of construction. The location of the new houses mainly depends on the lands that are made available by their owners. During the interviews, residents and policy-makers explain that the
lands sold are frequently the ones that the owners do not want because they are impractical.
They are often located at the parcel boundaries, on steep slopes. It makes building more complicated and it requires more financial and technical capacities for building earthquake-proof and landslide resistant dwellings on a slope. A lot of Montserratian households explain that because they invested a lot of money, if not all their money, in the house they built in the south before 1995 and they are still paying the mortgage for it, even though they do not have access to it, they cannot spend as much for the new one. The quality and the resistance to earthquake are therefore currently sacrificed.
The likelihood of being prepared also differs depending on households and depending on their origin and previous experience of hazards, as we will see more in details in Chapter Seven. The rapid demographic change seems to affect the capacity to build back better. If those who have experienced previous hazards are overall more aware of the need for being well prepared, a large part of the population does not have similar experience and may not pay the same attention to preparedness while building their house. In the Cayman Islands, Tompkins, Hurlston, & Poortinga (2009a, 2009b) found that new migrants are the group most vulnerable to cyclones as they are the least likely to prepare, they tend to live in more exposed places and interact mostly with other immigrants with no previous experience of such hazard. The research, which focuses on the agency of individuals to prepare to tropical storms, discovered that the main factors preventing adaptive behavior were the place of residence, that is close or adjacent to the coast, the recent immigration and the fact of renting accommodation. On the contrary, previous experience of major storms, strong social network, residency status and the fact of having a child under the age of 15 in the home tends to encourage individuals to prepare.
In Montserrat, informal discussions reveal differences of building methods depending on the origin of the households and their knowledge of the local hazards. In an informal conversation, a Montserratian woman highlighted the differences of practices between the communities. In September 2017, she said that
“Montserratians pay attention to the lay of land and will do the preparation work necessary as part of their building practices while certain non-nationals are assumed to take less into consideration that risk when building their house due to their lower experience of landslides.”
She gave the example of a house built by a Guyanese household and damaged by landslides during heavy rain. The owners had to reinforce the front of the house and build a retaining wall following that. She explains that because they used to live in a flat area back in Guyana, they do not think of the risk of landslide when building their house in the
She gave the example of a house built by a Guyanese household and damaged by landslides during heavy rain. The owners had to reinforce the front of the house and build a retaining wall following that. She explains that because they used to live in a flat area back in Guyana, they do not think of the risk of landslide when building their house in the