St. Vincent and the Grenadines was impacted by Hurricane Beryl as a category 4 storm on July 1, 2024, resulting in the loss of six lives and extensive damage to homes, public infrastructure and agriculture. The storm has left over 10,000 people in the country homeless, the government has said.
Most of the damage is concentrated on the islands of Canouan, Mayreau and Union Island in the Southern Grenadines. However, the island of Bequia and the main island of St. Vincent were also impacted.
Here at Richmond Vale Academy, all of our staff and students are safe and there was no damage to our campus buildings. However, there was significant damage to our farm, where most of the newly-planted banana and plantain trees were blown down. The chicken pens we built after the destructive eruption of La Soufriere Volcano in April 2021 were also damaged extensively. Many of the fruit trees lost branches and several fell over.
There is a lot of clean-up work to be done. This will take several weeks.
However, RVA has opened its doors in welcome, offering to host 40 evacuees from the Grenadines during the relief phase. This is being done in collaboration with the National Emergency Management Organisation, which has accepted the offer.
Hurricane Beryl has made its way into the history books as yet another record-shattering cyclone. It was the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season and rapidly strengthened to Category 5 unusually early in the year. The cyclone formed as a tropical depression on June 28, 2024, with winds of 35 mph but intensified into a hurricane with winds of 75 mph within the first 24 hours. It was a category 4 hurricane, packing winds of 130-156 mph by the time it impacted St. Vincent and the Grenadines on July 1, 2024.
Beryl is the first hurricane in what the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute of Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology has forecast to be a “hyperactive” 2004 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which officially runs from June 1 to November 30, 2024. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that heat and the likely development of La Niña later this summer point to an extremely active hurricane season. The tropical Atlantic, where most tropical cyclones form, has been near record warm.
“Sea surface temperatures in this area are closer to what would be expected in the middle of September — the peak of hurricane season. Meaning there was ample fuel for Beryl to not only form but also to rapidly intensify,” NOAA has said. Further, the National Hurricane Center has noted that June is exceptionally early for a major hurricane (Category 3 strength or higher), let alone a category 5 to develop. On average, the first major hurricane does not form until September 1.
Hurricane Beryl and other natural disasters over the years highlight the importance of the work we do at Richmond Vale Academy. Our response to another disaster is to scale up the number of people from around the world, including in the Caribbean and here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, attending training courses through our Climate Compliance programme. This ground-breaking hands-on programme has been running since 2012 and was created after Hurricane Tomas in 2010, as it was clear that the climate crisis would only worsen before it gets better.
Hundreds of people from more than 50 nations have come to St. Vincent and the Grenadines to train at Richmond Vale Academy to tackle the big issues of global poverty and global warming. They return to their countries and many are involved in creating sustainable futures and models wherever they are – be it in Europe, South America or North America.
Rich nations unceasingly poison the atmosphere through massive carbon emissions. These emissions continue to trap heat, making the oceans warmer and creating the ideal conditions for the formation of more extremely dangerous hurricanes such as Beryl. The harassment of the natural world has to stop. There is no other way, if we are to continue to live on this planet.
Questions we may ask ourselves are: How can it still be legal to pollute the atmosphere? When are the nations of the world going to create the legal framework and then fine the polluters?
Training people to respond to disasters and create sustainable solutions is needed around the world. These are the efforts RVA will scale up over the next decade in addition to running and developing projects to showcase sustainable solutions such as the use of solar energy (both on and off-grid systems), rainwater harvesting, coastal protection, coral restoration and ecological farming through various models at RVA and in villages across St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
We at RVA have just in the past year started creating ecological small farming models in Union Island and Mayreau and our hearts go out to them and all the people across the country who have lost their homes, livelihoods, churches, schools, etc. RVA will continue its tireless support to people who want to get involved with ecological and sustainable farming that will secure more food in times of crisis.