Hurricane Omar – Give Jack his Jacket.

Good Morning, St. Croix!!!

Most locals know that give Jack his Jacket means give credit where it is due and when it comes to Hurricane Omar, no one deserves more credit than Governor John DeJongh and his team at VITEMA (Virgin Islands Emergency Management Agency.) While Omar really wasn’t much of a storm, it was expected to be a very wet Category 3. Fortunately, it took a right hand turn veered East and missed the Islands.  Yeah, there was a lot of wind damage because the winds came from the wrong direction, but if it had been a direct hit, the winds and water would have come from every direction and their would have been much more damage.

So why give the Governor any credit at all?  Because almost every decision was timely and correct.  By the time the Wednesday call for curfew was being enforced, the rain and flooding was already severe, some parts of the island had lost power and it was dark.  That night, there were robocalls to every house on the island with a message from Governor DeJongh assuring everybody that he was working hard and praying for everybody and that everything would be all right.  Amazingly, many of our people never recognized the automated phone calls but thought that they were actually getting a personal message from the Governor.  According to my wife it was a well worded soothing message.

The curfews on the two days after the storm were well thought out allowing time for the citizens to do what they had to (including Friday night partying) while allowing road crews time to work on empty, curfew protected roads.

While it wasn’t much of a storm, there have been much worse efforts by prior administrations for even bigger non events.

The biggest failure for the whole event was WAPA which had some serious internal problems and failed to keep the public informed.  Lack of generating capacity led to a slow repowering of the island.  Instead of clearly explaining what had happened and why, the WAPA spokes person and their Customer service line was down for a couple of days so their was just no information.  Moreover, the restoration of power appeared random. Hotels were down for days, while residents received power.  There was no priority for the restoration of power to businesses so workers lost wages and will have no way to pay for the electricity they received at home.

Prior administrations had made restoration of power to hotels and other businesses a priority so that workers would have money to pay for the added expenses caused by the storm.

But then WAPA is not a direct government entity so the Governor is not responsible for their chaotic actions.

Give Jack his Jacket, the Governor did a wonderful job and he should pray for a storm two years from now to assure his reelection in the face of a collapsing economy.

Tags: Hurricane, Hurricane Omar, St. Croix, Virgin Islands