Recovery requires actual data, says GrassROOTS president

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Janice Johnson Dias, president of the New Jersey-based GrassROOTS Community Foundation (GCF), says Jamaica’s academic community should have conducted more comprehensive studies in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa to better understand and address the needs of residents whose communities were devastated by the Category 5 storm.

Johnson Dias outlined her position on Wednesday while presenting the GCF’s core findings from a well-being study conducted in Flankers, St James, five weeks after the hurricane made landfall on October 28, 2025.

The presentation was held at the St James Parish Library in Montego Bay, on the anniversary of Melissa’s landfall in Jamaica.

“The academic community has not seriously engaged this effort, because when Hurricane Katrina happened in the United States (in 2005), academic institutions everywhere wanted to figure out how are we going to be able to assess the situation so we can help the government make decisions about where they should put their energy. But because this is western Jamaica and not Kingston, researchers did not necessarily want to drive three hours to come down here,” said Johnson Dias.

“Right now we are in a bad position because many decisions are being made, whether it is NaRRA (National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority), or the ROOFs programme (Restoration of Owner or Occupant Family Shelters), with very little actual information that is systematic. We are making decisions with just snapshots about how things are to be done,” continued Johnson Dias. “Relief effort is nice, but recovery requires that we have actual data that is systematically collected and that can be replicated.”

In an October 25 article, The Sunday Gleaner reported on concerns raised by the Caribbean Research Policy Institute (CAPRI) about Jamaica’s ability to turn disaster donations into timely assistance. The institute cited delays in spending relief funds, gaps in roof-repair records, and prolonged disruption to schools and essential services. CAPRI officially released its report on the hurricane’s impact on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) began collecting data for the 2026 Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions on September 16. The exercise is intended to capture the extent to which Hurricane Melissa disrupted education, affected health and livelihoods, and damaged homes and other infrastructure. Data collection is scheduled to continue until December 16 and is expected to provide an updated picture of the population’s living conditions and well-being.

Johnson Dias also stressed the importance of mental-health services in the recovery process, pointing to findings from the Flankers study showing that 51.5 per cent of women and 30.5 per cent of young people affected by the storm rated their mental health as fair or poor.

The study also found that 31.7 per cent of respondents in Flankers reported having no access to mental-health care following the hurricane.

“The most resounding finding that we got was that Hurricane Melissa damaged our sense of who we are, about what was possible and how we could cope, and we did not have enough people to talk to about that. We had each other, but we did not have any professionals [counsellors or therapists],” said Johnson Dias.

“I think it is it is fair for any government to be underprepared, because this Category 5 hurricane was larger than expected and was overwhelming, but it is not okay to be unprepared,” continued Johnson Dias. “The Government’s job is to safeguard the nation state, and it needs to do that with information. We need more and better information so that we can move from being unprepared to more prepared.”

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com