‘Country should not have to endure current level of destruction from a category one hurricane’

Promises are once again being made about Government’s intention to impose minimum standards for building as numerous agencies attempt to mop up the mess from Hurricane Elsa, which wreaked havoc on some of the country’s substandard housing stock.

As he reflected on the significant damage left in the wake of the recent hurricane, Home Affairs Minister Wilfred Abrahams acknowledged that many houses have fallen woefully short of acceptable standards.

President of the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers (BAPE), Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Browne, president of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Edward Clarke and officials from the insurance community have all expressed their concern about the potential impact of a strong weather system on the country’s infrastructure.

Abrahams, meanwhile added that the evidence is even more glaring when one considers the fact that Elsa, a mere Tropical Storm that strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane, was on the “lower end” of cyclonic intensity.

“That alone tells us everything we need to know. Yes, I agree that our building code is voluntary. It points, I guess, to best practices, but there is nothing requiring people to do it,” conceded the Home Affairs Minister.

“There is no liability on architects and engineers who do poor designing and that is one of the things that we are going to have to look at. There will be further lessons coming out of this event that we cannot possibly ignore and one of those is that there must be certain minimum legislative standards for building that persons have to toe the line at.

“A lot of our housing stock exists already and there is probably very little that you can do to existing houses that people live in. But going forward, in terms of building new structures, there must be some minimum level that construction must meet to make us resilient to natural disasters. We should not be getting the level of destruction that we got for the passage of a category 1 hurricane,” Abrahams declared.

During a recent interview, Lieutenant Colonel Browne revealed that in some cases, the housing landscape has structures that have been around since the 1955 rebuilding effort after Hurricane Janet.

“It means that we have lots of houses that have been standing for 10 to 20 to 30 years that are not built to standard, people taking shortcuts whenever they have to make adjustments,” Browne told Barbados  TODAY.

On Monday, the BPSA president expressed serious concern about the apparent lack of scrutiny from authorities in routing out “unqualified” builders potentially leaving homeowners exposed to the elements by taking “shortcuts”.

“I think there is definitely a need for some building codes in Barbados. I think the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers [BAPE] has been clamouring for that for years including the civil engineers and the structural engineers,” Clarke told Barbados TODAY. (KS)