Homeless for the holidays

(CNS): Having lost her Watering Place home twice to hurricanes, once in 1980 to Hurricane Allen and last month to Paloma, 73-year-old Meridith Dilbert is now the last of Cayman Brac’s homeless remaining at the Aston Rutty Civic Centre, the island’s main hurricane shelter and for the last month a refuge for those displaced by Paloma.

Dilbert is currently staying at night in the medical wing of the Civic Centre, not because she is sick but so she will have company since eleven elderly clients from the Kirkconnell Community Care Centre (KCCC), which was badly damaged in the storm, are still staying there until the Centre is repaired. Prior to that she was sleeping in the upstairs balcony in a room set up with cots, dormitory-style, with KCCC staff. Now that they have found alternative accommodation, and with nowhere else for the government to place her, Dilbert has been given a bed in the new medical wing.

Still, Dilbert feels depressed and forgotten. She has been told that she will be given one of the new trailer homes but she doesn’t know when that will be and she is scared that she will be turned out of the Civic Centre. “They’re not interested in me. That’s the whole matter and the truth of it,” she said. (Left: A few days after the storm, Meridith Dilbert sits where her house used to be while a couple of good samaritans help sort though her belongings.)

“From the time the storm been here, I don’t have nowhere to go. No one has come here and said, ‘Meridith, we’re going to get you somewhere,’ and no one is checking that I have anything to eat.” She said that while the shelter wardens remained after the storm, they took good care of her, but since they went home she feels that she has been left to fend for herself and has lost weight since the storm.

All she got of all the emergency supplies given out after Paloma was a zipper-bag of rice, Dilbert said, though she did get parcels sent to her from people in Grand Cayman. “They’re not looking out for me in the right way at all.”

A source from the Department of Children and Family Services said that Dilbert was a priority, but admitted that she had not received any counselling and that there were probably others who would also benefit from this service. (Right: Meridith sits on her cot at the ARCC)

No one appears to know how many displaced people there are following Paloma. Some elderly residents have been sent to Grand Cayman to stay with relatives there, and there are an unknown number of people staying with friends and waiting for the trailer homes to be ready or homes to be repaired or rebuilt. Rental accommodation was snapped up very fast after the storm.

Deputy District Commissioner Mark Tibbetts said that there were 17 trailer homes in Watering Place. A lot of work had been needed to make them liveable, including building a septic system and doing the electrical work so that they could be hooked up to the mains, but they were hoping to have between one and three homes ready by this coming weekend.

Another nine were on their way from Grand Cayman and there was a strong possibility that these would be placed in private yards so that they could be hooked up to the main grid and the existing septic system. A number of people were in need of a trailer home and the decisions about who would get them would involve the Ministry of District Administration, Planning, Agriculture and Housing, Tibbetts said.

Meanwhile Meridith Dilbert waits for something to hope for. “This place is like a prison,” she said.