The courthouse, the library, schools, the downtown shopping district and most everybody’s roof — all gone, wiped out by the most powerful hurricane to ever hit Jamaica.
Practically no building in Black River, along the country’s southern coast, remains intact. In a country where dozens of towns where ravaged by the hurricane, the town’s destruction has become emblematic of the post-storm misery Jamaicans must now grapple with.
The Rev. Thomas Ngigi, a Kenyan priest posted to St. Theresa’s parish in Black River, sat in the shade in what little was left of the church, counting his blessings.
Hurricane Melissa tore the roof off, demolishing all the pews and most everything else inside, but leaving the crucifix, tabernacle — the locked decorative box where the Holy Eucharist is kept — and a revered statue of the church’s patron saint intact. With the rectory in shambles and his diabetes medications lost, he laid his clothes and religious books out in the sun to dry.
St. Theresa’s, a waterfront church that had been part of a majestic promenade of historic buildings, is surrounded by ruins.
“At night, people come by and ask if they can stay here,” Father Ngigi said. “I say the whole place is blown apart.”
A local homeless man with the words “security guard” written by hand on the back of his T-shirt keeps the priest company. The church’s groundskeeper, who said he was trapped in the rubble of another building on the property and dug himself out, goes out on his bicycle to look for food to bring back.
Hurricane Melissa pushed into Jamaica as a Category 5 storm last week, killing at least 32 people and destroying an untold number of buildings and homes. At least one of those killed washed up on the shores of Black River and has yet to be identified.
Much of the country remains without electricity, as the authorities struggle to clear roads to reach stranded communities.
Black River, a town of about 5,000 people and the capital of St. Elizabeth Parish, in southwest Jamaica, was one of the hardest hit places.
Home to a shrimp and freshwater fishery, Black River boasted of having a house that got electricity in 1893, even before such luxuries arrived in much of the United States. But that waterfront house on High Street, the Waterloo guesthouse in its most recent incarnation, just a short walk from St. Theresa’s, was also obliterated by the massive storm.
The local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, however, fared surprisingly well.
Even buildings that did not lose their roofs are swamped with mud. Everyone in town is cleaning up.
After days of desperation that saw stores looted, Black River is at work trying to pick up the pieces. The power is out, phones are down, people are running out food, but aid distribution has begun and there’s a palpable sense of a place trying to come back from an extraordinary calamity.
Firefighters carried buckets of mud out of the first floor of the firehouse, which was deluged by 16 feet of water.
“To clean this? This definitely is not a one-day operation,” said Kimar Brooks, the fire superintendent. “Ninety percent of the citizens are displaced.”
Many of the police, firefighters, nurses and doctors in town have yet to go home and check on their houses, though they assume that nothing remains.
“The staff change in their vehicles and shower here, because they don’t have any other place to go,” said Dr. Robert Powell, an emergency room physician at Black River Hospital.
The hospital’s roof blew off, and most of the patients were evacuated. More keep coming in as people fall off ladders or are pulled from toppled houses.
With her home lost, Andrea Montaque said she and at least five members of her family were spending nights in a Nissan Tiida, a compact car, parked outside what is left of her house. “I’m traumatized,” she said.
The wood house next door had collapsed into a massive pile of sticks, killing one resident. Ivan Joseph, who also lived there, managed to escape. “I don’t have anywhere to go,” he said.
So much of the Auglo Senior Living home across the street was destroyed that 13 of its residents were crammed into one room, the only spot in the facility left with a roof.
At the police station, an inspector sat outside in the blazing heat with what they call the “big book,” a giant ledger also known as the station diary, where an officer painstakingly writes out by hand each reported incident. Most people came by, on foot of course, to report lost vehicles in the hopes of getting compensated by insurance.
Serena Edwards came to file a report on her missing mother. Her mother’s house collapsed during the storm, but a neighbor saw Ms. Edwards’s mother run away from the flying debris into the rain.
“My feelings, I think she’s alive,” she said as she headed off to start searching shelters that the government opened as the storm approached.
Some people apparently believed that the local high school was one of those shelters.
The security guard at the school, Oliver Taylor, 52, tried to figure out what to do with an older woman with dementia someone had dropped off there overnight on Saturday, perhaps thinking it was a safe place. The bewildered woman sat by herself on a mattress in an empty classroom.
She was not the only one staying at Black River High School: Mr. Taylor said he lost his home and was also living there.
“This was like a tsunami,” Mr. Taylor said as volunteers from an ambulance service checked his blood pressure and inspected his foot, because he had stepped on a nail, which pierced his Crocs.
“This is going to take a while.”
Camille Williams contributed reporting from Kingston, Jamaica.
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
Erin Schaff is a photojournalist for The Times, covering stories across the country.
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