Officers in Grenada had been scrambling on Wednesday to arrange a subject hospital after Hurricane Beryl ravaged almost all of the buildings on the nation’s island of Carriacou, together with its lone hospital.
Carriacou’s hospital, Princess Royal, which has 40 beds and was lately retrofitted to resist extreme climate occasions, was flooded and 75 p.c of its roof had been blown away by Beryl, officers mentioned. “This rendered the ability principally unusable,” Dr. Shawn Charles, the Grenada well being ministry’s chief medical officer, mentioned at a information convention on Wednesday.
Two deaths have been confirmed on Carriacou, which Beryl struck on Monday as a Class 4 hurricane. However with the island nonetheless with out energy, officers mentioned the extent of potential casualties was troublesome to evaluate. Officers mentioned three sufferers had been taken off the island.
Officers plan to arrange a subject hospital that the US donated two years in the past to assist Grenada take care of the Covid-19 pandemic and pure disasters. Dr. Charles mentioned officers had been “engaged on the logistics of making ready the sphere hospital for setup.”
Princess Royal was lately upgraded to make it extra resistant to wreck from storms and different disasters. Dr. Charles mentioned he couldn’t recall how extreme a storm the retrofitted facility had been designed to resist.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has described the destruction on Carriacou and one other Grenada island, Petite Martinique, as “unimaginable” and “whole.” On Wednesday, he mentioned Grenada would search to droop funds on a number of of its mortgage agreements, citing the “catastrophic” storm.
Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.
