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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Isolated by Irma, British Virgin Islands don’t know what will come first—help or Hurricane Jose

By Lindsey Bever and Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Washington Post, September 9, 2017

The once lush mountainsides in parts of the British Virgin Islands are now bare.

In Road Town, the capital city nestled on the island of Tortola, hillsides are strewn with broken branches, roofing materials, and cars, some of them blown upside-down.

Many homes have been stripped down to their frames. Many business are gone.

The governor said there have been reports of casualties from Hurricane Irma, which hit the British Virgin Islands on Wednesday afternoon as ferocious Category 5 storm.

Irma cut electricity throughout the islands and knocked out other vital communications infrastructure, essentially leaving the British Virgin Islands’ 35,000 residents largely isolated not only from each other but also from the rest of the world. There are few ways for them to know when the British government is sending help--or whether it will get there before Hurricane Jose threatens to strike.

Several calls placed to people on the British Virgin Islands Friday morning were met with error messages and busy signals. When calls went through, sometimes those on the other end could not hear. When a call finally connected to a local newspaper editor on Tortola, he said that he had ridden out Irma with a few dozen others in a choir loft at St. George’s Episcopal Church.

“It’s just carnage here,” said Freeman Rogers, a Road Town resident and the editor of the BVI Beacon.

“One concern right now is Hurricane Jose, whether or not it’s going to hit us and how hard,” he said, explaining in a phone interview that people are running low on food and water, clean clothes and medical supplies. “People don’t have roofs. It’d be really rough if we got hit with another big hurricane.”

Rogers, originally from South Carolina, was able to get online Thursday and post a story and photo on his newspaper’s website. Reporting from a churchyard, he touched on this key concern: “Communications are mostly down and many homes are largely inaccessible because roads are blocked with vehicles, telephone poles, roofing metal and other debris.”

He asked a Post reporter Friday to help him look up conditions on Hurricane Jose--now a strengthening Category 4 storm that could threaten these islands with tropical storm conditions by Saturday night.

On Wednesday, as Irma barreled toward the islands, Rogers and his girlfriend had put their cat, Bamboo, in a safer area in the hallway in their home and fled.

“We came to the shelter because we were worried the roof would blow off,” he said. The original shelter, a small building outside the church, started losing its metal roofing, Rogers said, so people sought shelter inside the sanctuary, where windows and doors had already been ripped from the hinges. Rogers said some friends hid in bathrooms at home, “literally holding onto each other so they wouldn’t blow away.”

The cat, Rogers said, survived.

Thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, Sarah Thompson, who lives on the west end of Tortola on Frenchman’s Cay, had spoken Wednesday morning to her husband, Christian.

Thompson, a British attorney, had gone to see friends on the West Coast during what she and her husband thought would be a mere tropical storm. He was hunkering down in their island home.

Abruptly, she lost all communication.

She tried to call and text him back, she said, but her messages would not go through.

She said she heard nothing until early Thursday, when she received a text from the wife of one of his friends:

“Using a tourist’s phone. We are all okay. Please let everyone know.”

Thompson tried to call and text back--getting crossed phone lines, or nothing at all.

British Virgin Islands Gov. Gus Jaspert acknowledged in a message on Facebook there was a frustrating vacuum of information because communications infrastructure was down across the islands.

“I know many of you are concerned about what will happen in the short term over the next couple of hours and days,” he said, encouraging people seeing the message to “share as widely as you can” because of communications difficulties. “I would like to appeal to you to remain calm and to reassure you that we are doing all that we can to assist you.”

British Virgin Island residents--and family members in other places--who were reached by The Washington Post said they understand that the United Kingdom is limited in what it can do until Hurricane Jose passes through.

But there is still a sense of frustration--not that the British government isn’t responding to the dire need, but that there seems to be no clear strategy, and no good way to communicate it.

Prime Minister Theresa May has said that British military personnel have been working “round the clock” to provide relief to the battered islands. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Friday the RFA Mounts Bay--a ship carrying aid supplies and a crew capable of repairing damage--was heading to the islands from Anguilla on Friday morning to “distribute humanitarian aid.”

In need of answers, people on Facebook have been posting pleas, urgent information and photos of the destruction.

“It’s not like the U.K. has been silent on it, but there’s not been a clear message on steps or what’s exactly going to happen,” Thompson said. “In a situation like this, you need a strategy and a timeline, and there’s not been any of that.”

The Post tried to contact the governor’s office numerous times Friday, but the phone rang continually, then gave a busy signal.

#Hurricane Irma #British Virgin Islands

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rocklandhistoryblog · 7 years ago

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The Haverstraw King's Daughters Public Library, aka Fowler Library Building, c. 1900. Postcard: Creator Valentine & Sons Publishing Co., Ltd. (New York, N.Y.)

The library itself, established near the end of the 19th century, is the oldest chartered public library in Rockland County. Shortly after its creation the library moved into this building, combining two contemporary revival architectural styles, after money was raised by the local chapter of the King's Daughters, a women's civic organization. A similar wing was built in 1983, and in 1991 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Haverstraw was incorporated in 1854, and quickly grew due to a successful brick industry that tapped the large clay deposits along the river. In 1891 a group of wives of some of the community's wealthier businessmen organized the Haverstraw Ladies' Home Mission Circle. Originally a sewing circle meant to help the village's less fortunate, it soon saw a need for a wider scope. In 1894 a plan for a larger organization was drawn up, and the next year it formally incorporated as the King's Daughters Society.

That year the president of the society suggested the organization set up a public library, a common charitable goal during the Gay Nineties. The members agreed, and petitioned the New York State Board of Regents for a charter. The request was approved, and Melvil Dewey, then director of the New York State Library, signed the charter, making the new library the oldest chartered public library in Rockland County.

In 1896, the library opened in Jenkins Hall, to the west of the current building. Two years later, it moved to the National Bank Building at Main and Second streets. Soon the library became popular enough that it was apparent a building of its own was necessary. In 1899, local brickmaker Denton Fowler offered to donate $10,000 toward the purchase of land and the construction of a building to be named after him, as long as the money was matched.

Nothing happened for three years, as the society was unable to raise additional money. They decided on a smaller building, and two of the members were able to raise the money necessary. Construction began in October 1902, and the library opened seven months later.

William H. Parkton, a local architect who had designed many buildings in downtown Haverstraw, was chosen to design the library. He mixed Classical Revival elements such as the wide frieze, quoins and pilasters with Renaissance Revival features including round-arched windows, detailed cornice and rusticated stonework.

In 1956 a fire badly damaged the upper floor. The building was repaired, but its entire collection was lost.

The area grew, and in 1978 the Thiells branch was opened in a storefront on Route US 202 further inland to serve patrons in the other areas of the Town of Haverstraw. That same year the state granted the library a new charter as a special library district, giving residents the right to vote on budgets and elect trustees to the board. The Thiells branch soon moved to the basement of Town Hall.

In 1983, a combination of state and federal funding helped the library expand the Fowler Building with the west wing named after Kay Freeman, the director of the library for 21 years A condition of the federal contribution was that the wing be architecturally sympathetic with the existing building. The original building's exterior was also restored during construction, and a wheelchair ramp added.

Three years later, the library began looking for land for new facilities, a process that would take it most of the next decade. During the time, the original building was listed on the National Register and, in 1993, received an award from the Historical Society of Rockland County for continuing use.

In 2001 the Town Board approved a subdivision on Rosman Road that would allow the library to build a new main branch at Garnerville. Ground was broken later that year and it opened in 2003. Three years later, the library board closed the Fowler building to restore its interior. It reopened in 2007.

The library is located on a medium lot at the corner of Main & Allison Streets. A pinkish wall, original to the site and thus considered a contributing resource to the National Register listing, runs along the south side. The lot slopes gently toward the Hudson River a short distance to the east. The surrounding buildings are mostly residential.

Its main section is a 3-story, rectangular structure with a rounded southeast corner, exposed basement and flat roof. The roof is surfaced in asphalt and pierced by a brick chimney with corbeled cap at the center of the west face.

Below the cornice is a limestone frieze decorated with carvings of garlands tied together in ropes and the letters "FOWLER LIBRARY BUILDING" on the south face. The fenestration includes large arched windows at both reading rooms, the adult room on the east side first story and the children's on the south side of the second story. Another arched window tops the arched main entrance on the corner. All have sandstone voussoirs. The mullions of the reading room windows are Ionic pilasters.

The north facade has similarly asymmetrical fenestration, with a projecting bay. On the west is a sympathetic wing built in 1983 in conformance with National Park Service standards. It is also brick with a flat asphalt roof, and has a simple limestone cornice.

Two wrought iron gates protect the main entrance. Behind them four bluestone steps, matching those at the street corner, lead up to the vestibule and its tiled floor. The sidelighted oak doors lead into an interior vestibule with similar paneling. A bronze dedication plaque commemorates the library's opening on May 14, 1903, and lists the names of its principal donor and the society's board of directors at that time.

The interior layout of both stories remains unchanged, as do many of the finishes. Both the adult rooms downstairs and the children's rooms upstairs have fireplaces with glazed brick, marbleized tile floors, carved mantels and beveled mirrors. The central stair has oak wainscoting, ash banisters, and newel posts topped with carved urns. The flooring, moldings and plaster walls are all original, as are the bookshelves and most other furniture.

On the west wall, the original brick and stone window trim is still visible from the new wing side. The original plaster remains on the other side. In the basement, the brick flooring set in dirt is believed to be that of a hotel building on the site before the library was constructed. ---National Register of Historic Places National Park Service

#haverstraw #king's daughters library #fowler library #north rockland #rockland county #rockland history #hudson valley #hudson river valley #river town #brick industry

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