According to Prime Minister Perry Christie, the criticisms of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and other government entities in the wake of Hurricane Joaquin are misguided. NEMA came under fire following reports that many residents in the southern Bahamas were not warned about the destructive category four hurricane until too late. The agency was also criticized for failing to ensure that all shelters were open ahead of the storm.
According to Christie, NEMA and the Met Office worked tirelessly ahead of the storm - which, he noted, veered off its projected track leaving the country little time to prepare.
"We should note that Hurricane Joaquin continued to wobble and drift toward The Bahamas, indicating that the computer models were not to be relied upon at the early onset of the storm. Let me just repeat that for those who want to talk," he said.
Christie was speaking after fellow PLP MP V. Alfred Gray suggested that "heads should roll" at some government agencies over the handling of the hurricane, which devastated several islands in his constituency. Although in his view it was the public servants who should have done better, Gray said he fully expects that politicians will bear the brunt of the blame - a fact which he clearly feels is unfair.
"I believe the government dispatched a minister of the government to every island at the same time, and I believe that was the best response we could have given," he said.
For his part, NEMA Director Stephen Russell said the issues that arose regarding hurricane preparedness are "beyond" him.
"We have national infrastructure where the government would have invested $68 million [and] we had some challenges with it. So the experts from BTC and those, the providers of that infrastructure, they have to examine and analyze that whole process because we were relying on that. That is failing," he said at a press conference this week.
Perhaps these three men intended their comments to inject some clarity into the situation. In fact, all they did was deepen the public's sense of confusion and alarm regarding the handling of this storm. The prime minister points to Joaquin's defiance of expert opinion. Yet how many dozens of times during his 42 years in public life has a hurricane failed to conform with the predicted track? Considering the country's geographical positioning, is this not a contingency we should always be prepared for?
Meanwhile, Gray's "best response" of sending ministers to each affected island is, if possible, even more puzzling. It is said that in many cases ministers showed up virtually empty-handed, posing for photo opportunities with supplies donated by hardworking non-governmental organizations and community groups. Compare this with, for example, the 100,000 pounds of real, tangible supplies provided by Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner's team, and Gray's point seems meaningless.
If Stephen Russell is correct about the failure of infrastructure costing the public nearly $70 million, the comments of Christie and Gray become even more inexplicable and outlandish. Why is this apparently monumental and presumably very dangerous failure not at the center of the national conversation?
What we are left with is a disturbing picture of incompetence, obfuscation and finger-pointing. The arrival of another destructive storm is not a question of 'if', but rather 'when', and the dense confusion generated by Christie et al does not give the rest of us any reason to repose confidence in the future.
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