preparedness

There is a particular moment after every great storm when the noise subsides, the winds retreat, and what remains is not drama, but exposure. Rooflines torn open. Roads fractured. Systems—once assumed solid—revealed as thin, brittle, provisional. It is in that moment, not during the tempest itself, that a country discovers what it is really made of. Hurricane Melissa did not simply damage Jamaica....

There is a particular silence that follows a storm. Not the calm before. The calm after. It is the sound of a country taking a breath. Jamaica stands in that moment now. We arrive at 2026 carrying the weight of what has passed. A hurricane tested us. Not just our buildings but our thinking. Not just our infrastructure but our assumptions. This is not a dramatic moment. It is a reflective one. The kind...

Why the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority matters, why it exists, and what “building back better” must truly mean Jamaica has arrived at one of those rare, uncomfortable moments in national life when the future presses itself into the present. National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NARA) is not just another institution added to the alphabet soup of government. It is a...

It begins, as it always does, with a swirl on a screen.A pale spiral forming over the Atlantic, a name whispered first in passing — Melissa.At that point she is nothing more than an organised rumour: a tropical depression, a projection, a probability. But in the islands, we know how rumours behave. They grow. They gather energy. They take on lives of their own. By the time the storm earns her title...

There’s something oddly mesmerising about watching a storm form — that slow ballet of cloud and sea, the delicate symmetry of destruction gathering shape. From a distance, the satellite image looks almost beautiful: a swirling masterpiece of physics and inevitability. But beauty takes on a different meaning when that spiral starts pointing toward home. Tonight, the name on everyone’s lips is...

In the Caribbean, time often moves to its own rhythm — unhurried, measured, and deeply spiritual. But every so often, nature steps in to remind us that even paradise must prepare. This week, Jamaica stands poised beneath the gathering clouds of Hurricane Melissa: a storm born slow, grown steady, and whispered into being by the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea. And as the nation watches and waits, one...