As the earliest Category 5 storm ever observed in the Atlantic carves a path of destruction through the Caribbean, we get an update on damage from Hurricane Beryl from the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, where the storm hit Tuesday. He describes the disaster scenes he witnessed and discusses the rising challenge of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis. “The developed countries, the major emitters, are not taking this matter seriously,” says Gonsalves.
For more, we’re going to St. Vincent. We’re joined by Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.In the southern Grenadines of our archipelago, which is — of 32 islands, nine are inhabited. What we have in the south is really Beryl’s Amageddon. Union Island is flattened. That’s an island of 2,500 persons. Mayreau, similarly, with a hundred family homes, and Canouan, somewhere between Mayreau and Union Island in terms of population, that they’re all severely damaged.
This, the devastation wrought in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised, at the end of it, that we’re probably going to have to rebuild upwards of a thousand homes. And it’s a country with 46,000 households. So, you will see the magnitude of that. And then we have to repair others and public buildings, the disaster at the seashore, you know, the erosion of the land, the land degradation because of the raging seas.
I noticed in the United States of America one candidate is saying, “Drill, baby, drill,” and to cause more emissions and denying climate change exists, you know, and so on and so forth. We have to get real with this.