While the territory experienced inclement weather from a tropical wave on the night of Thursday June 17 that mainly resulted in heavy showers, at least one other Caribbean country has reportedly suffered moderate damage from a “freak storm”.
Barbados experienced a tropical wave on the night of Wednesday June 16 which resulted in houses completely losing their roofs, government buildings suffering damage, several fallen trees blocking roadways and power outages across the island.
Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley addressed the island following the passing of the tropical wave where she reported some of the early findings, which included the sighting of regular lighting strikes.
“Clearly we had a freak storm last night. I was up all night and receiving communication from the Chief Met Officer. At one point we were having lightning strikes every 15 seconds, the thunder felt as if it was coming from the bowels of the earth as opposed from the skies as it usually does and the winds regrettably reached storm force winds in a number of areas.”
The initial things we’ve had this morning has shown, and this is very preliminary, that we’ve had at least reports of damage to at least 13 houses so far, of which at least six of them are full roof losses, and this ranges from St. Joseph to St. Andrew to St. James to St. Philip. So, it literally has taken pockets across the island.
Prime Minister Mottley also detailed the damage caused to some of the roadways.
“We also have reports of a number of fallen trees across significant areas and indeed when we look at the roads that are blocked, we’ve categorised them between those that are priority in order to be able to remove any blockages on the main highway and then to be able to deal with the subsidiary roads there after that are either affecting districts,” Prime Minister Mottley added.
The tropical wave also resulted in the cancellation of all schools which had to in turn conduct online classes where possible.