The geopolitics of Hurricane Melissa

Folks across Jamaica are just starting to emerge from shelter after the Cat-5 Hurricane Melissa barrelled into the island with winds of up to 282km/h (175mph).

It’s the third-worst hurricane to hit the Caribbean after Wilma (2005) and Gilbert (1988), and it’s now ploughing into Cuba as a Category-4. So as details become clearer (including several tragic deaths), we wanted to offer some insights into how embassies and capitals approach these kinds of disasters, realistically all starting with…

• Step 1: Help your staff

You don’t always get advance warning, so embassies typically run emergency drills every year to test their back-up generators, satellite links, radio comms, water/food supplies, etc.

If you do get a warning, embassies will often evacuate non-essential staff and families.

In addition to the obvious welfare concerns, this reduces the burden on local authorities, while also enabling remaining embassy staff to focus on doing their job, which gets us to…

• Step 2: Help your nationals 

Prevention is better than cure, so the best way to help your fellow citizens is often just to push them home before disaster hits. To that end, embassies have put out some remarkably stark “leave now” warnings this week, with tourists dutifully jamming the exits.

But many still typically remain for all kinds of reasons: no seats, no insurance, no money, no clue, or even no flights (airlines started cancelling services earlier this week). Jamaican authorities say there were still 25,000 tourists on the island when Melissa hit.

For those left, capitals will typically set up a hotline to handle the worried families back home (to avoid the embassy getting swamped), while blasting guidance out if (big if) comms are still working, urging folks to find shelter and follow the local authorities.

Then once the situation stabilises, embassy staff will often spend the bulk of their time out in evacuation centres, hospitals, and (yes) morgues, helping connect citizens with their families, their insurance providers, their airlines and (in extreme cases) repatriation flights.

• Step 3: Help your hosts 

In parallel (if not in advance), HQs back home will be coordinating any help they can offer hosts (Jamaica in this case), subject to embassy advice from the ground — it’s a delicate balance between wanting to help, but not wanting to further overwhelm local authorities.

The best approach is often to present a ‘menu’ of ways you can assist, whether engineers to repair infrastructure, doctors to treat patients, C-130s to deliver food and water, search & rescue teams to help find survivors, etc. The local authorities then pick what they need.