UNITED NATIONS (CMC) – A senior official of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is urging Americans not to forget the less documented Caribbean victims as the United States marks the first anniversary of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Americans have been marking the occasions with various ceremonies along the northeast section of the country, particularly in New York, where the devastating storm caused over US$18 billion worth of damage.
But UNDP director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Heraldo Muñoz, is calling on New Yorkers not to forget that the United States was the last stop on Sandy’s path of destruction.
“Sandy, one of the largest Atlantic hurricanes on record, rumbled across the Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other countries before finally reaching the eastern seaboard of the US,” he said.
One year on, UNDP said that recovery efforts from the storm are underway, but some of the agency’s officials say that the suffering of those in developing Caribbean nations may have been underplayed.
“Because of socio-economic vulnerabilities, people in developing countries are often less prepared for a large event and unfortunately are not as quick to bounce back or recover,” said Jo Scheuer, UNDP Coordinator of Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery.
“While the mainland US suffered greater losses in terms of total fatalities and the extent of damage, for the Caribbean nations, Cuba and Haiti in particular, the storm was comparatively more expensive having a much more profound impact on local livelihoods and the GDP,” added Scheuer, stating that, in Haiti, the storm intensified the humanitarian crisis caused by the 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300 000 people.
