The hur­ri­cane fore­cast for 2019 is just as bad as the fore­cast of 2018 and with nine to 15 named storms ex­pect­ed to form in the At­lantic this year, of­fi­cials from the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca wants the rest of the Caribbean to pre­pare. Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the is­land last week and mar­velled at how Do­mini­ca has man­aged to bounce back from ex­ten­sive dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Maria which rav­aged the is­land in Sep­tem­ber 2017, killing 65 peo­ple.

Many of the bod­ies were nev­er found and some of the homes bat­tered by the force of the hur­ri­cane re­main roof­less. Some of the moun­tains still har­bour rem­nants of de­bris but Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Re­silience, Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment and Ur­ban Re­new­al Joseph Isaac be­lieves this year the is­land is bet­ter pre­pared the hur­ri­cane sea­son. Back in 2017 the res­i­dents like Dec­i­ma Sharplis, own­er of Sea­world Guest House, were not pre­pared for a Cat­e­go­ry Five Hur­ri­cane.

Sharplis said she could re­mem­ber run­ning around her home se­cur­ing items be­tween 11 pm to 3 am while the hur­ri­cane ham­mered the is­land. “Maria was the most hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence I ever had. I will nev­er for­get when I went down­stairs to se­cure some stuff and I saw these big waves com­ing at me. I had to run,” Sharplis said.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]