‘Dammed’ for safety

The people of Somerset St. Thomas have taken a battering from the hands of Mother Nature. For several years now a number of homes and other property have been completely covered by silt and debris from the hillside during heavy rains or hurricanes, forcing families to relocate and start from scratch. At one point the community was to be declared a disaster area due to the severity of the damage.

However thanks to one of the main components of the EU/Christian Aid Creating Sustainable Livelihoods Project, three check dams have been constructed in the crevices of the mountainsides to “prevent the sand, silt and debris from coming down and covering the entire community,” explains project coordinator Claudia Sewell.

Sewell revealed that the project which is being implemented by the Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre WROC cost millions of dollars, but was quick to point to the tremendous support the community provided in terms of free labour. Indeed the labour may have been free but it was hard gruelling and sometimes downright painful work. “They would pick up stones from the river and carry to the check dam, they took water up the mountain and it is not nice climb to go to the top of that mountain in Somerset,” Sewell emphasized. Continuing she noted that even when “you go there on a Sunday they (community members) are there working and Saturday and they are there working…carrying stones.”

This gallant dedication is fuelled by the vested interest that the people of Somerset have in keeping their community safe and sustainable “because it affects all of them whether they live directly below where the devastation is or further up in the community it affects everybody in the community, because if you live at the top of the community you cannot pass when the landslide comes down and there is just one way in and one way out,” the project coordinator explains.

Joscelyn Brown, a resident in Somerset and one of the persons helping to organize community involvement, adds that “we who lived the experience (destruction of houses due to landslides) don’t want to see certain things happen again so we grab the opportunity of the check dam with both hands!” Now Brown and his neighbours can breathe a sign of relief knowing that with the three check dams in place, the mountains won’t come tumbling down on their property since the community is now ‘dammed’ for safety.

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