By Roberto Savio and - -
SAN SALVADOR, BAHAMAS, Sep 5 2011 (IPS)

Anyone who discusses international affairs with Americans quickly becomes aware of a fundamental change in syntax without which they find it impossible to converse. The subject of every sentence has to be the United States. If China, India, or Germany, for example, are the focus, the attention of the American interlocutor will waver -unless, perhaps the subject is Israel. The US is the only possible subject of discussion for Americans,with the obvious exception of the cultural elites and US citizens doing business around the world.

When you come across this phenomenon in the Caribbean during hurricane season, it is so pronounced as to seem a caricature. The hurricanes begin off the coast of Africa as a depression, then gather force over the warm waters of the ocean, building eventually into hurricanes. It is difficult to predict their path until they reach the Spanish Caribbean (which includes Haiti). The Bahamas is the next stop and from there they can head up to the United States and the Gulf of Mexico, out to Bermuda without touching US territory, or through northern Florida.

I pass my holiday in San Salvador in the Bahamas, known as the island of discovery because it where Christopher Columbus first made landfall when he reached the “New World” on October 12, 1492 , his crew on the verge of rebellion (thus its name, Holy Saviour). It is an island the size of Manhattan but with a population of just 1200. Like the rest of the Caribbean it is in the likely path of the hurricanes.

The local television signal in the Bahamas does not reach past the capital, Nassau, so here everyone watches American TV and can follow the progress of the hurricanes on the Weather Channel, which is exactly what its name promises: a station dedicated entirely to forecasting and covering the weather.

The hurricanes that lash the United States pass first through Puerto Rico, Cuba, or Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Despite the fact that when the hurricanes reach this latitude they are always at the peak of their strength (weakening as they pass and then growing stronger over the Bahamas), the Weather Channel barely covers them at this point, mentioning them only to alert the US public to a potential danger and using developments in these countries as no more than a backdrop for the story.

One point never made is that Cuba is hit by far more and far more violent hurricanes than the US, and yet for years there has not been a single death in Cuba because of these storms (in contrast Irene caused 15 American casualties). The reason is that Cuba’s system of warning and prevention is the most developed in the world.

But when the path of a hurricane begins to shift towards the US, the situation changes completely. All channels immediately begin round-the-clock broadcasts, and the people in the Bahamas who were given no coverage and no warnings can watch non-stop updates on every minute development in the superpower to the North.

Some might rightly point that it is natural that an American channel focuses its coverage on its citizens and not Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians. But Puerto Rico is US territory, and receives no more coverage than the latter.

But this is beside the point. The real issue is that when hurricanes pass by here, they are seen as acts of nature, and the people live with them. Irene reached San Salvador at 4 in the afternoon on August 24 and stayed until five p.m. the following day. It knocked down trees, telephone poles, and electric lines. A tree fell on my house and the irrigation system of the garden was destroyed. The situation was similar on other islands, including Providence Island, where Nassau the capital is located and 120,000 people live. It was a category 3 hurricane with winds of 200 kilometres per hour. In the Dominican Republic it dropped massive rains. It left 25 centimetres here. The following day the islands effected all had their electricity restored and reported modest damage -which isn’t to say that a hurricane is a walk in the park. Category 4 and 5 hurricanes are extremely dangerous.

When Irene reached the US it was predicted that it would weaken to a category 2 storm, and made land as a category 1, with winds diminishing to 100 miles per hour. Nonetheless it was received with total mobilisation as if for an invasion. More than one million people were evacuated. Obama proclaimed on national TV that this was a historic hurricane. Mayor Bloomberg of New York, not to be upstaged, nearly paralysed the entire city. Ban Ki Moon shut the United Nations (which he would have been able to avoid if it had stayed in San Francisco, where it was born. Many believe that had the UN remained there on the west coast of the US it would be more open to Asia and less dominated by the Atlantic countries.)

The storm took a heavy toll: 15 dead, 4 million left without electricity, and billions of dollars of damage. Europe has been hit by even more violent wind storms but the costs never reached these levels. It is clear from this situation that the building codes of the US are lax, partly because the construction lobby -one of the most powerful- opposed new regulations because they were seen as too costly. In the US it is still possible to build houses out of wood and sheetrock, which would not be allowed on these islands. The damage from Irene also reveals that the US infrastructure, both public (like bridges and roads) and private (electric and telephone systems) are very old and were built as cheaply as possible to maximise profits. Now with the federal budget slashed, the US will have to cut even further spending on maintenance and modernisation. The situation in the private sector is equally dire.

No doubt everyone wishes that there would be no more hurricanes, even category one. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Roberto Savio is founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

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