Hurricane Irma destroyed most of the roof and obliterated a wall of Rowan Malone’s home at the bottom of Joes Hill.
He has been living there anyway.
In full view of the road, Mr. Malone sleeps in a bed situated in one of the home’s less leaky nooks, eats his meals in a folding chair, and sweeps out the water that streams inside when it rains.
Mr. Malone, who has lived in the house for about 12 years, reluctantly left last week to seek medical treatment in St. Thomas, but he hopes to return soon.
He is among hundreds of residents who are still struggling in compromised living conditions two months after Hurricane Irma, which officials said displaced more than 6,000 people. Though public services are steadily being restored, thousands still live without electricity, running water or even a roof that keeps them dry.
“It’s safe to say there’s a significant number of people who need immediate assistance, particularly with basic assistance, which is what we’re focusing on right now,” said Jamie Sport, a communications delegate for the British Red Cross who is assisting with the relief effort. “People are saying they need food. There’s no starvation or serious hunger going on, but it’s difficult for people, especially when they’ve lost their job.”
Pregnant
In a Long Bush apartment building near Mr. Malone’s house sat Vanda Delpesche, who is pregnant with a baby due this month.
The three-bedroom unit that she and her common-law husband share with four other tenants lost most of its roof in Irma, but they patched it up with plywood and tarps and moved back in shortly after the storm.
“Nobody go anywhere, because we haven’t got anywhere else to go,” explained the St. Vincent native, a coffee shop employee who has worked in the territory for about a decade but is now mostly reliant on her husband’s income. “Everybody want their privacy and when we ask they say well they don’t have space, so we had to just come back up and try and see what we can do.”
The mosquito-plagued apartment has no electricity or running water, and it floods whenever rain falls.
Ms. Delpesche, who lost most of her belongings in Irma, pointed to the bare floor in the hallway.
“From there,” she said, “the bathroom right up to the kitchen is like a swamp, so you have to be sweeping out.”
‘So much water’
In a nearby apartment overlooking Scatliffe Alley, Lucita George said she contracted a skin condition from the same problem.
“After the hurricane, there was so much water in the house, and it had leaves in it,” she said, explaining that after cleaning up for several days she developed a rash that required her to go to a dermatologist. “That’s from the water, because they said they had a lot of people coming in with that same problem.”
Still, the Jehovah’s Witness has remained optimistic, and looks forward to returning to her house in Dominica.
“I leave that in God’s hands,” she said, adding that her situation could be much worse.
Living in a car
Other residents have had to make do without a house.
Sitting outside Violet’s Bar and Inn near Scatliffe Alley last month, Mario Skelton said that he had been living in his car since the hurricane collapsed the roof of his house in Fish Bay, and said he knew at least 100 people left homeless by Irma.
“They’re living in cars, abandoned buildings, or with friends,” he said.
Mr. Skelton added that 13 people were living in an abandoned house nearby, but he wouldn’t reveal where.
He said he can move back home as soon as he gets $1,000 to fix his roof. But when that money might materialise, he’s not sure.
“But I’m not going to a shelter,” he said. “I’m going to stick it out.”
Though thousands of residents have received assistance from government officials, volunteers, and Royal Marines, Mr. Skelton said he felt neglected.
“They stopped giving everything out,” he said. “They closed the distribution centres, or won’t tell us where they are. The shelters are getting everything. What if we don’t want go to the shelters?”
Though relief supplies actually are still being distributed in various locations around the territory, many residents expressed similar frustration.
Housing shortage
With housing scarce across the territory, even steady employment does not guarantee a comfortable living situation.
Robert Smith, who works as a barber in Road Town, is one of the three remaining tenants in a roofless green apartment complex in Horse Path. He lives with a roommate, and another man is staying in a relatively undamaged unit next door, but everyone else has fled.
His biggest problem, he said, is the leaking roof caused from inches of standing water in the room upstairs. Because the roof is gone and renters left, rain collects on the floor.
“We push the water away ourselves,” Mr. Smith said. “First time I came down there, they said the window was open, so it blew in a lot of debris and got messed up. We just cleaned it up.”
Mr. Smith used to live in a building up the hill before Irma and survived the storm by standing underneath a doorframe and then in the corner of a bedroom. He kept his hands above his head to catch falling chunks of the concrete roof as the apartment was destroyed around him.
In the immediate aftermath, he stayed with a downstairs neighbour for a month and eventually moved into the room in the green building.
“It was hard to get at this moment because a lot of whole stuff gone,” he said.
Mr. Smith is evaluating whether or not he should return to his native Jamaica next year, but for now he says his new housing situation in Horse Path will have to do.
“You just live,” he said. “Nobody really bothers you. You just live.”
Sharing space
Other residents have moved in with friends, neighbours or family members.
Julian Grunt, an air-conditioning technician, used to live with his wife and three children on the top floor of a house in West End. However, Hurricane Irma did serious damage to their roof and made spending nights there difficult.
“We can’t sleep up there because when the rain falls, rain comes in,” Mr. Grunt said last month.
Instead, the technician and his family had been spending their nights with a family downstairs, packing more than 10 people into one apartment.
The arrangement sufficed, Mr. Grunt explained, because they still had been spending most of their daytime hours in their own home, which is covered by a tarpaulin.
Joel Fahie lost his Belle Vue home during Irma and was forced to move in with his mother, who lives in the same area.
Her place wasn’t unscathed either: It lost a door and a window, but remains liveable, according to Mr. Fahie, a road cleaner for the Department of Waste Management.
Though he’d like to get back to his own home, he acknowledged it would be a long process.
“Gotta start from scratch,” he said.
Still, Mr. Fahie didn’t let that dampen his spirits.
“I tell everybody: Make the best out of your day, because just how we didn’t know what was gonna be the outcome of Irma, we don’t know the outcome of anything, especially what tomorrow bring,” he said. “Just make the best of the day.”
This article originally appeared in the Nov. 9, 2017 print edition of the BVI Beacon.
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