In early 2016, Sharleen DaBreo took the floor in the House of Assembly and warned legislators for the seventh year in a row that her Department of Disaster Management urgently needed a new building.
The DDM’s McNamara headquarters — which had long served as the territory’s National Emergency Operations Centre — was so dilapidated that it likely wouldn’t withstand a major storm, the director explained as she repeated her annual request for the funds needed to build a replacement.
“We’ve lost everything. The building has totally collapsed,” Ms. DaBreo said this month. “When we came out the morning and went down and saw the building, some of us broke down. It was shocking, … because we knew if we stayed there we would have been taking out 25 bodies.”
NEOC moves
No lives were lost in the escape, but communications systems went down and precious time ticked by as the NEOC relocated to the nearby Peebles Hospital, where it continued to operate in the days after Irma.
Since then, the centre has moved to the Ritter House on Wickhams Cay II and DDM workers have been trying to salvage what they can from their McNamara office.
But it hasn’t been easy.
“Not having a building has had a very big psychological impact on my staff,” Ms. DaBreo said, adding, “We’ve actually lost 40 years of assessments and equipment. It has been extremely difficult for them going back there.”
Besides destroying the building, she added, the storm destroyed the networks it contained, including its telecommunications system.
“The structure is gone,” she said. “It really hampered our ability to continue to operate, but we did.”
New building
A new building had been on the DDM’s wish list for more than seven years, but attempts to start construction had stalled repeatedly for lack of funding.
In 2010, the agency received approval from Cabinet to design a new NEOC. Subsequently, plans and studies were completed and submitted to Cabinet for a $4.3 million, 17,762-square-foot building designed to withstand major hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
The Cabinet approved the project, but legislators never allocated the funding to start construction.
Meanwhile, the DDM’s warnings escalated.
In 2012, Ms. DaBreo told the HOA’s Standing Finance Committee — which meets annually to decide how to allocate public funds — that the condition of the existing building, which was constructed in the early 1970s, “was extremely deplorable,” according to a report on the closed-door SFC proceedings from that year.
Lightning, she said, had damaged the agency’s electrical equipment; the second-floor roof was leaking, particularly in her own office; and she had seen evidence of structural failures, flooding and other problems.
$2.9m request
Though the new building would cost about $4.3 million, she asked lawmakers to approve $2.9 million for a first phase that would include the lower ground floor, the ground floor and retaining structures.
In the 2012 SFC meeting, David Archer, then the permanent secretary in the Deputy Governor’s Office, reiterated the urgency of Ms. DaBreo’s request.
Mr. Archer “stated that although the need for the [NEOC] building was discussed, based on the [HOA] members’ questions he was not certain that the members understood how badly the building was needed,” the SFC report summarised, adding that the PS warned, “If a hurricane or earthquake were to hit the territory, there was the possibility that a new location would have to be found to actually manage the country’s national disaster.”
More warnings
The $2.9 million was not allocated, and such warnings continued in subsequent years. In 2016, Ms. DaBreo told the SFC that lives could be lost if a major disaster should strike while the facility was in its existing state.
“She explained that one of the things that she wants the [HOA] members to truly understand is that if there were to be a major event occurring in the region and the facility itself is unable to allow for a distribution of a warning or alert, the BVI is going to lose a number of people,” the 2016 SFC report summarised, adding, “She noted that it would create a significant challenge to get the message out if they are in a structure that does not have the ability to stand up.”
Mr. Archer again seconded Ms. DaBreo’s warnings, pitching the idea of paying for the new facility over 10 years, at $400,000 a year.
Ms. DaBreo added at the time that a new building could be constructed incrementally on site while the existing facility remained operational.
Other projects
During that SFC meeting, Premier Dr. Orlando Smith acknowledged the importance of the DDM’s request, but explained that the government had been faced with “many infrastructural needs” in recent years, according to the SFC report.
These projects, he added, included the new Peebles Hospital, the Tortola Pier Park, and the House of Assembly building, which he said needed to be replaced.
Dr. Smith (R-at large) did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but Opposition Leader Andrew Fahie (R-D1) said that the DDM’s building request first came to the HOA in the “dwindling era of the then 2007-2011 administration,” when his Virgin Islands Party was in power.
“However, the support for the work of DDM by the then-administration never dwindled nor wavered in any shape or form,” Mr. Fahie stated, adding, “While I cannot speak for the reasons why the current administration, who has been in the seat of power since 2011, has not honoured DMM’s request for a new building for the past seven consecutive years, I am confident that they are competent enough to fully explain the reasoning behind their actions. Overall I know that current and past governments hold the work of DDM in high regards.”
Unprecedented storm
Though the destruction of the DDM building hampered response efforts in the days after the storm, Ms. DaBreo stressed this month that Hurricane Irma was an unprecedented storm that would have tested any facility.
“Nothing like this has ever occurred in the Atlantic, and it’s two of them and then we’re coming out of an unprecedented flood event,” she said, adding, “But when you look at the level of destruction from two Category Five events, we did come out with some level of success. You did have homes that stood up from it.”
This article originally appeared in the Oct. 26, 2017 print edition.