When Montrealer Byron Cameron was a child in Grenada, there was a common saying describing hurricane season in the Caribbean.
“Back home we say, ‘June too soon, July standby, August is a must, September remember and October it’s all over,’ ” he told Global News.
With climate change, however, he warns, “June ain’t too soon no more.”
Beryl, a category 4 hurricane, levelled parts of the country on Monday. It was the biggest storm recorded in the area, this early in the hurricane season. The eye moved north of the main island but ripped through Carriacou and Petit Martinique, the two smaller islands of the tri-island state.
Gemma Raeburn-Baynes, also from Grenada, is still learning about just how bad the storm was.
“Well, Carriacou is flattened,” she stated.
Her family lives just south of the path of the eye of the storm. Still, she’s worried.
“My family is in St. Patrick,” she said. “That was hit also. I can’t reach them and I’ve been trying.”
In the Caribbean, the storm has so far killed at least three in Grenada as well as another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, another Caribbean country which was also severely hit.
The effects of the storm are being felt in Montreal too. Raeburn-Baynes is preparing for the annual Spice Island Cultural Festival, a four-day celebration of Grenadian culture, planned for the second weekend of July. The Grenadian prime minister is expected, but that is now in question given the destruction in his country.
Raeburn-Baynes now wants to use part of the festival to marshal a relief effort for her home country.
“They need everything,” she stressed. “They need food, they need clothing – all the roofs are gone.”
Cameron’s plans too have changed. The calypsonian was supposed to fly to Grenada Tuesday night but now he has to wait.
“I was supposed to do a performance in a 50th anniversary show,” he explained, “but the show is cancelled.
The country is celebrating 50 years of independence this year and people in Montreal want to use that spirit of celebration to come together. As the storm heads for Jamaica, many point out that in times like this, all the affected islands will band together for mutual support.