ST. GEORGES,
Grenada -- I stepped off the plane in Grenada on Nov. 7, exactly
eight weeks to the day that Hurricane Ivan, a Category 4 storm with
151-mph winds, stalled over the island for 15 hours.
Only a handful of
us got off in Grenada -- two USAID representatives, a small church
group, three insurance adjusters, a Red Cross worker, several
Grenadians loaded down with luggage, and me. The rest of the Air
Jamaica passengers were tourists who continued on to
Barbados.
Point Salines
Airport looked to be in good condition. Damage there had been
quickly repaired so that daytime flights resumed within a few days
of the storm, bringing supplies and aid. With the runway lights
again operative, flights can land at night, as well.
Its the rainy
season in Grenada now, good for the foliage but bad for the 90% of
homes, schools, churches and other buildings that lost all or part
of their roofs, including the Houses of Parliament and the official
residence of the prime minister.
A local tour
operator who called himself Mandoo picked me up at the airport,
apologizing for being late.
I was bailing out
my basement, he said. With most homes underinsured or not insured
at all, keeping dry is the order of the day, and blue roof tarps
are cherished goods.
Debris is off the roads
now, stacked on either side in huge brown piles of brush, branches,
tree roots and rotting wood. Twisted galvanized metal shards from
roofs, lightposts and signposts are piled on the grounds of what
had been the sports stadium. It now looks like a crumpled erector
set.
Electricity and
phone service are functioning again in the parish of St. George in
the south, where St. Georges, the capital, is located. Everyone on
the island has clean drinking water.
William Joseph,
tourism director, said electricity would be fully restored by
February. Although Market Square in St. Georges had damage, I saw
vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Some shops, banks and
galleries around the Carenage, the historic heart of the capital,
were open.
Ivan came in from
the south, stalled over the island, then whipped around and came in
from the north, Mandoo said. It was the wind that did it. We could
actually see it. It was white and made noise and spawned lots of
twisters. Grenada looked like a huge bomb had been dropped on
it.
Torrential rains
followed the wind, causing landslides that upended many of the
shallow-rooted nutmeg trees. Nutmeg production is a mainstay of
Grenadas economy along with tourism.
The government now
advises farmers to plant short-term crops like bananas and sweet
potatoes. It takes almost 10 years for one nutmeg plant to produce
a crop, and many of the trees that were lost had been cared for by
generations of Grenadian farmers.
Before Ivan,
Grenada had 1,700 rooms in 96 resorts, guest houses, inns and small
hotels. About 300 are now open.
Monmot, a 26-room
hotel that opened last July near St. Georges, was fully booked with
relief workers. We have some guest bookings for January, but a lot
of people arent confident yet about Grenada, said Jackie
Williamson, guest services manager.
Calabashs 30 rooms
reopen Nov. 21, and Bel Air Plantations brightly colored villas,
built to Florida building codes, according to Sandra Martin, the
front desk manager, never closed.
Weve had
cancellations for the winter, but were looking at niche markets
now, she said.
Not so at Coyaba,
whose 70 rooms and public areas took a beating. Its closed for a
year, but well reopen as a four-star resort, said Richard Cherman,
the general manager. Spice Island Beach Resort promises to come
back better than ever in December 2005 as does Rex Grenadian next
fall.
I checked into the
100-room LaSource resort near the airport, the only person to check
in that day, according to a clerk at the front desk. The resort has
a limited number of rooms in service for relief workers, but will
close to rebuild, upgrade and reopen by next December.
Suzanne Gittens,
the assistant general manager, told me about herding some of the
160 guests at the resort into the spa treatment rooms during the
storm.
We had to wait
until the winds calmed briefly while the eye was overhead so we
could go get them safely from their rooms, she said.
Mandoo took me to
Grand Etang National Park, Grenadas 3,800-acre preserve and rain
forest. It makes me happy to see it becoming green again, he said,
although he was worried about the monkeys and the endangered
Grenada doves.
We drove to
Dougaldston Spice Estate near Gouyave on the east coast, a popular
spot on his Spice Plantation Route tour.
Catherine Joseph,
who runs the small nutmeg operation housed in a 200-year-old
planation house, was hard at work preparing for Grenadas first
mega-cruise call the next day.
We sometimes get
more than a thousand visitors a day when the cruise ships are in,
she said. We need those ships back.
Indeed, Norwegian
Cruise Lines Norwegian Spirit pulled into St. Georges on Nov. 9 to
a red-carpet welcome at the pier.
Tour buses and
taxis mobilized to bring almost 2,000 visitors to the spice estate,
a nutmeg-processing station in Gouyave, Levera Beach, LaSagesse
Nature Center and the River Antoine rum distillery.
Were realistic
about this recovery, said Edwin Frank of the Grenada Board of
Tourism. Well do it in phases, and well come back better than ever.
And well build an Ivan Museum so no one ever forgets.
To contact
reporter Gay Nagle Myers, send e-mail to [email protected].