Devastating Impact of Hurricane Beryl on Barbados Fishing Industry Revealed

The full extent of Hurricane Beryl’s devastation on the fishing industry has been revealed, with a staggering 220 out of 312 active boats — or seven in ten boats – lost at the island’s largest landing site, the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex.

The revelation came during a high-level meeting on Monday between ministers, Social Partnership representatives and a visiting team of economists from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The ECLAC delegation is here until Thursday to conduct a damage and loss assessment mission, aiming to determine the financial fallout from the Category 4 hurricane that ravaged the island’s coastal areas.

Minister of the Environment and National Beautification, Blue and Green Economy Adrian Forde painted a grim picture of the destruction at the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex: “Of the 312 active boats, 220 were lost, 64 were destroyed, 26 sunk and six received minor damage.” He emphasised that the island was in need of financial assistance to rebuild” and called for more emphasis to be placed on environmental conservation.

The opening session at Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre saw ministers and officials outlining the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Beryl to the visiting economists.

Trisha Tannis, chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA), raised concerns about the island’s inland infrastructure. She urged for “a national assessment of the inland infrastructure to be done, noting that one was not done in as much as 50 years”. Tannis stressed the importance of such an assessment “to determine the integrity of the infrastructure in the event that a natural disaster impacted the island in the future”.

“Given the projections for not just the frequency of hurricanes, but the strength of the anticipated hurricanes is the issue of infrastructural resilience, both inland and on the coast.

And we may not find ourselves so fortunate and therefore, looking at our inland infrastructure is also a critical concern to the private sector.

“What is critical to us is a real evaluation of how sturdy all of our physical infrastructure is against Category 4 or Category 5s [hurricanes] and to do an actual assessment,” she said.

The lack of comprehensive insurance coverage for fisherfolk was also highlighted. Tannis noted that while “a few fisherfolk had boat insurance none had operation disruption insurance”, exposing a significant vulnerability in the industry.

Dennis De Peiza, general secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations (CTUSAB), also expressed serious concerns about the island’s road network.

“We have learnt from what has happened in the other Caribbean islands, the devastation, in which they were unable to reach part of the countries,” De Peiza told the meeting.

“We have challenges getting north and east of the island, in particular St Joseph, St Andrew and so forth. Our road network has been under challenge for a prolonged time and I don’t think we are paying attention to it. We don’t even have a helicopter that you can fly over and drop food supplies . . . So something seriously has to be done about our road network.”

The trade union leader cautioned that Barbadians needed to take climate change “more seriously” and warned that beachfront properties were a “hazard”. De Peiza also advocated for an insurance scheme to be considered for frontline workers who risk their lives working during national emergencies.

He said: “We need to address the welfare of the workers that we call frontline workers and emergency workers. We are calling on the government to look carefully at those persons and to protect their welfare interests. They respond in all types of emergencies and none of them have any personal accident insurance coverage. So they go at their own peril to serve the nation. We believe that the government must step up and protect the interest of those workers, by fully doing it [or] partly doing it.”

The meeting also heard from Senior Minister Dr William Duguid, the minister for infrastructure in the Mottley administration, who highlighted the severe coastal impact of Beryl, pointing to the beach erosion along the South Coast from the hurricane’s eight-foot-high storm surges.

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb