Sint Maarten is still recovering from Hurricane Irma: ‘Where is our school?’ | From other media

The royal visit to Sint Maarten on Monday was all about getting back on track after Hurricane Irma. While the Oranges laugh and assist with a disaster drill, it sounds in the poorest neighborhood: where is our school?

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All the houses were blue, says firefighter Eric Chase. Newcomers to Sint Maarten thought they saw mountain slopes full of swimming pools, he says scornfully. But in reality, they were blue sails that people used to cover their homes after Hurricane Irma tore away roofs and ravaged them elsewhere on the island.

“Irma,” he says, grabbing a fellow firefighter’s arm, “was very, very bad.” Chase was already in command when the hurricane swept over six years ago, damaging 90 percent of the buildings: corrugated iron and debris everywhere. Chase pulled people out of broken houses and cars.

Today he does that again. “Roof off!” he yells. His colleagues rescue a woman smeared with fake blood, who is crying out in pain, from a car wreck. The royal family, who set foot in Sint Maarten just an hour earlier, is watching the disaster drill from the sidelines. Princess Amalia holds the victim’s IV bag for the photo opportunity.

Getting back up after Hurricane Irma

The first day of the Oranges on Sint Maarten, part of the two-week journey through the Caribbean part of the kingdom, is all about getting back on track after Hurricane Irma. “Sint Maarten will recover, I’m sure of that,” said the king when he visited the island with 40,000 inhabitants shortly after the disaster. He saw ‘destruction and upheaval’ everywhere.

Today he finds a sprung island where there are still a ghost hotel here and there with flapping curtains, but where most houses have roofs again. The shipwreck-strewn bay was swept clean two years ago. Carpentry and sawing are taking place everywhere on the island: new tourist hotspots are emerging.

Reconstruction after the hurricane got off to a slow start, partly because the Netherlands imposed strict conditions on the expenditure of 490 million that the cabinet released – because corruption was rampant on the island. The money was deposited with the World Bank and is only available under certain conditions. Six years later, only 48 percent of the money has been spent, according to the website of the European bank.

Princess Amalia holds an IV bag during a disaster drill on Sint Maarten Photo: ANP

Sister Amalia

After assisting with the fire drill, Princess Amalia briefly plays a Red Cross sister who must register an injured resident (the king) before entering the decked-out hurricane shelter. She asks his name, but the king says he has forgotten it because he fell on his head.

“How many relatives do you have?” asks Amalia. “Two”, the concussed king remembers, but what were their names? He shrugs.

To which Máxima jokes: “Can you remove this patient? He is not really cooperating.” Amalia registers him laughing as John Doe.

“Wonderful”, Red Cross director Nadia Chirlias calls the scene after the royals have left. After Irma, the ‘casual presence’ of the Red Cross on the island was over, emergency aid was provided and minor repairs to houses are still being carried out to this day. Yes, the reconstruction is going in phases, she says, but it is going well.

The illegal immigrants are probably not sleeping peacefully

Chirlias sleeps worse when the hurricane season starts, in June. Just like the fire brigade, she is always ready. “It can happen anytime,” she says in English, the official language on the Windward Islands. Many houses on the island may have been reinforced, but that does not apply to the houses of the large group of illegal immigrants. “They probably don’t sleep peacefully either.”

This group largely lives in the Dutch Quarter, a poor neighborhood that lies against one of the hills on Sint Maarten. “It’s a pity that the royal family is not here to see,” says the unofficial mayor Christina Hodge. Her neighbors are planning a big party for her 75th birthday, because of all her help after Irma.

Christina Hodge in the poor Dutch Quarter. Photo: Sinya Wolfert

“Whoever is poor cannot afford security,” is her simple conclusion. Immigrants build their own houses from wood and chipboard – one strong gust of wind and they’re gone. The Red Cross recently came to give a workshop in the community center: how to make sturdy roofs. “That might help a bit.”

The Dutch Quarter is a long way off, she says. “Houses are still broken and the school in our neighborhood has still not been rebuilt. That should be a priority, right? Now the children go to school in all kinds of different places in the neighborhood and the parents often don’t even know where to put them. have to pick up.”

Hodge finds it scandalous that only half of the World Bank money has ended up on Sint Maarten. For years a song was sung in the Dutch Quarter: “We are waiting for the Wóóórldbank!” She sees people getting frustrated with the process they have to go through to get money. “Maybe I should put a World Bank office here so I can help them!” she laughs.

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