House to House Assessments Conducted to Determine Total Damages

The Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis Committee looked at the track of the hurricane to get a general idea of where to carry out their efforts and where to intensify their data collection. Hendy says her teams went house to house over the last nine days, in an attempt to interview everyone affected. Today, those teams were back out to assess an additional two hundred additional homes. We asked her if this is the extent of the homes and families that will be assessed before a final report is submitted. Here is what she told us.

Tennille Hendy, Deputy Chair, Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis Committee

Tennille Hendy

“I wouldn’t say that is the total. I would say that is the volume right now. We have a system where we liaise with the Belize City Council, NEMO, where they have their hotlines, people call in. We do foot patrols, we get tired, and we are not robots. You might miss someone, they might not be at home when you get there, and they might be seeking shelter somewhere else. We have seen a lot of that, officers coming back and said we saw damages but there is no one there. We have repeated visits to those areas and they are still not there. So, we use the hotline as well to kind of gauge us and validate our operation. So what we do, we have four levels of structural damages. So level one is no significant, a few hammers and nails. Level two which is minor damages, you need a little bit more work. Level three is major; maybe you cannot stay in there and level four well basically gone. What we are seeing outside of Belize City is that there is an even spread between the four levels of damage. Belize City is a different dynamic because the eye of hurricane just past to the south of us. So, we are seeing a lot of damages to smaller structures. We are seeing level one and level two having more or less a fighting game to see who is going to take lead. But, we have level three and four right in there in their own right. We have in Belize City the numbers as of now, we have two hundred and eighty houses we have entered in the platform that has been totally destroyed. That number could go up, because like I said we are still doing assessments.”