Caribbean countries watching, preparing for tropical storm amid COVID-19 outbreak
Emergency management officials from Antigua to Puerto Rico to the Bahamas spent Tuesday watching — and preparing — for the potential arrival of Tropical Storm Isaias, a fast-moving storm churning its way west across the Atlantic.
But with the region already frayed by the months-long COVID-19 pandemic, officials also found themselves in uncharted waters. At issue is how to respond to any potential threat posed by a hurricane or tropical storm while limiting exposure to the deadly virus that has already infected more than 100,000 people in the Caribbean basin and left more than 1,200 dead.
“It’s a very complicated scenario. We have a lot of variables to take into account that have been added to our regular workload,” said Jerry Chandler, the head of Haiti’s Civil Protection office. “We’re taking necessary measures but we are also having to play it by ear, depending on what pans out, and see how we address and adapt.”
The ninth tropical cyclone, in what’s expected to be a very active storm season, is expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Isaias overnight. It could drop three to six inches of rain on the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic while it lashes the islands with 60 mph winds.
Flooding and rain is also expected in the Bahamas, where on Tuesday officials were not only keeping a close eye on the storm’s movement but the island nation’s spiking COVID-19 cases after registering 65 new infections, their largest single-day accumulation so far.
Bahamian government officials have advised the population to not only prepare for the approaching storm, but to also make preparations to either wait it out at home, or at the homes of friends or relatives. If that is impossible, shelters will be available but social distancing and face masks will be enforced, they have warned.
“We are definitely going to feel the impact of it and we’re looking at some rainfall,” said Wayne Neely, a hurricane expert in the Bahamas where disaster officials earlier in the day sent out an updated list of storm shelters.
Neely said it was possible for Bahamians, still recovering from last year’s Hurricane Dorian, to see a category 1 or 2 hurricane with the current system, although “right now the storm is entering some hostile environment.”
But with the country dealing with 447 COVID-19 cases and still recovering from Dorian’s devastation, Neely said, regardless of the intensity, “any damage that occurs would be significant for the Bahamas because right now the economy is in tatters. We’re going to get flooding in low-lying areas, we’re going to get possible wind damage and water damage as well.”
Forecasters have stressed that the potential storm’s path and intensity are unpredictable this far out. Everything from Saharan dust clouds to the mountains of the Antilles could affect the outcome.
Still, it didn’t make Caribbean emergency officials any less worried.
Recent rainfall in Haiti had saturated the ground, Chandler said, and that means even a brush with the country’s northern region, could lead to devastating mudslides and flooding.
Still late Tuesday, the country’s meteorologists had not yet issued any weather advisories although their weather counterparts in the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola, had issued a tropical storm watch earlier in the day.
“To be honest, it’s not the storm itself that’s concerning me. It’s the repetition of storms, tropical waves that are accumulating more and more, which puts us in a situation where it rains every day and the saturation is more and more,” Chandler said. “We don’t have much we can do besides brace and prepare for what’s coming and making sure our teams are ready and can assist the population and do what needs to be done.”
That meant deploying trucks to the north, northeast and northwest to preposition hurricane supplies that included potable water, pedal-operated hand-washing stations and tens of thousands of face masks.
In Puerto Rico, where officials were wrestling with a power blackout that left around 500,000 people without electricity, preparations were also taking place.
During a Facebook Live Stream Tuesday, the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto, hoping to assure residents of the island’s readiness, said local schools and arenas would be available for use as shelters after Wednesday afternoon. In addition to discussing infrastructure and storm preparation, Cruz Soto also said the municipality would put in place COVID-19 prevention strategies at the shelters.
“To be in a shelter of the municipality of San Juan, you must use masks at all times,” Cruz Soto said, adding that masks must even be worn while people are sleeping, and that social distancing will be strictly enforced inside shelters.
Vieques Communications Director Haronid Cruz Félix told the Herald that the local government identified one school as a shelter for the expected tropical storm. He added that most people who use these kinds of facilities are usually elderly viequenses without relatives in the municipality and people who already have structural damage to their homes.
“Within our limitations, at the moment, I have understood that we are doing well [for storm preparation,]” said Cruz Félix.
According to the Department of Health, the island municipality has only 3 confirmed coronavirus cases. However, Cruz Félix said there were nine confirmed cases, according to Edna Ponce, the epidemiologist who handles coronavirus cases in the Fajardo region. Cruz Félix said that at the shelter, social distancing and mask use would be enforced.
He also vouched for the ability of local emergency services and nonprofits to provide the supplies they needed to manage the novel coronavirus in the storm shelters.
“I can guarantee you that the Puerto Rico Bureau for Emergency and Disaster Management has the masks and resources needed to manage the situation,” said the Vieques spokesperson.
While infections from COVID-19 continue to increase in Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where they topped more than 64,000 Tuesday, the virus has been contained in the smaller islands of the Eastern Caribbean, which are expected to feel the onslaught of the storm first.
Should the islands get hit with more than just several inches of rain and see the kind of devastation the region saw in 2018 when Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit, it will be a real test for the Caribbean’s response, which until now has consisted of simulations involving the coronavirus pandemic.
During the start of the season on June 1, the acting director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, Elizabeth Riley, told journalists that “this is a hurricane season with a difference.”
“Not only are we seeking to manage the threats associated with not just hurricanes but severe weather events, we also are dealing with the reality of the ongoing drought and we have this additional complexity of COVID-19,” Riley said.
Riley said in preparation for the season, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, which is the regional emergency response apparatus for most Caribbean countries, agreed with partners and responders “on a policy of do no harm.”
“We want to ensure that they are taking the necessary measures with respect to ensuring that that we are not exposing populations that can benefit from surge support to any additional risks from COVID-19 and similarly we want to ensure that those providing support whether from the region or externally are also protected from contracting COVID-19,” she said.
It is one of the region’s biggest challenges.
During a virtual conference Monday with members of the 15-member Caribbean Community known as CARICOM, the bloc’s secretary general, Irwin LaRocque, said that while the region has done well in managing the COVID-19 outbreak, hurricane season presents new risks.
“The challenge of managing COVID and the threat of a hurricane is real,” LaRocque said.
He noted that this was driven home last week as he sat in a Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency meeting on preparations for tropical storm Gonzalo. As they tracked the storm and discussed its potential impact, the issue of logistics and the need for rapid testing was evident given that most of the countries in the storm’s path had contained the virus or were seeing very low transmission numbers.
“To travel within the bubble to our member states rightly [does] require the PCR test,” LaRocque said, noting that the number of hours it takes to get a laboratory COVID-19 PCR test poses great challenges to keeping people safe and infections from ramping up. “If a hurricane strikes, we need to be able to respond; the first responders need to get in almost immediately to assist in the recovery.
“We see the threat that is looming again,” he said.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 10:50 PM.
