By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News|
ANNA REGINA, GUYANA — A powerful weather system characterized by fierce, gale-force winds exceeding 30 kilometers per hour and blinding rainfall tore a path of destruction across Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), leaving more than 100 private homes, commercial properties, and public schools severely damaged.
The destructive squall has also triggered a massive political firestorm over structural integrity after the high winds completely ripped off sections of the roof at the newly constructed Anna Regina National Stadium, just days before its highly anticipated July 3 commissioning.
President Dr. Irfaan Ali immediately mobilized and led a senior inter-agency emergency team to the Essequibo Coast to spearhead an on-the-ground assessment and coordinate relief operations. The presidential delegation included Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Mandanlall Ramraj, and Civil Defence Commission (CDC) Director General, Colonel (Ret’d) Nazrul Hussain.
Briefing the Head of State on the coastal crisis, Regional Chairman Vilma De Silva noted that severe, concentrated structural devastation was recorded across major hubs including Henrietta, Richmond, Lima, and Charity. Preliminary assessments indicate that high-velocity wind damage to roofs accounts for nearly 90% of the domestic destruction.
“The initial response has been to distribute tarpaulins to ensure families have temporary cover while a full-scale damage assessment remains underway,” a regional representative confirmed. The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Engineering Corps has been deployed to work alongside local builders to prioritize roof replacements for the most vulnerable, while four elderly residents from Henrietta village were safely relocated to relatives.
The storm also inflicted severe structural damage on local educational infrastructure, specifically battering the Anna Regina Multilateral School and the Riverstown Primary School. At Riverstown Primary, an active female teacher sustained head injuries when a school shed collapsed under the weight of the winds. She was rushed to a local hospital and remains under medical observation, prompting a statement of deep concern from the Ministry of Education, which has mobilized specialized engineering teams to fast-track emergency repairs across the school district.
Concurrently, the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) deployed emergency linesmen to remove fallen trees, snapped utility poles, and mangled zinc sheets that had become entangled in the transmission network, successfully restoring power to 90% of the blackout-plagued Essequibo Coast within 24 hours.
However, the physical fallout has quickly mutated into a heated political battle. Taking to Facebook to issue a stinging critique of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Opposition Member of Parliament Ganesh Mahipal publicly questioned the quality of state-funded construction frameworks. Mahipal pointed out that while the windstorm was intense, older adjacent buildings emerged completely unscathed.
“I would have accepted that the squall alone was responsible for the entire roof of the Anna Regina stadium being blown off if the older buildings around it had suffered the same fate. But they didn’t,” Mahipal argued. “The GDF building right next door remains intact, also the Jaigobin high-rise building and several other nearby structures. The logical conclusion is that the heavy wind exposed poor workmanship and substandard construction at the stadium. It is as simple as that.”
While project engineers are on-site conducting structural integrity audits to determine if the venue can be safely reinforced in time for its original Diamond Jubilee dedication, the disaster has renewed calls for stricter enforcement of climate-resilient building codes across public infrastructure lines as extreme weather events intensify across the coastland.
