The bungling Keystone Kops of the silent films of the early 1900s would find good company among some of our public officials. We are told that Port Maria, the St. Mary capital, is below sea level and vulnerable to flooding when it rains. We would, therefore, expect that this fact would be taken into account when infrastructure developments are planned and implemented for the town. Yet, within a few hours last week, Port Maria was flooded, leaving residents and business people marooned - apparently because a recently-constructed bridge was built too low thereby converting it into a dam for a river that was in spate.

Local Government Minister Dean Peart has since said a new bridge is to be built three feet higher.

We have often lamented the lethargic or inadequate preparations for known flood-prone areas ahead of the rainy seasons. With the country experiencing a quiet hurricane season and not much rain for most of this year, the state of preparedness of the public infrastructure has not been put to the usual test for the wider public to assess.

In the case of the bridge in Port Maria, however, it is doubly ironic that little attention seems to have been paid to the warnings of people who live and work there that it was being built too low. Now public funds must be spent redoing what should have been done properly in the first case.

Once again we are left to question the adequacy of supervision and management of public projects such as in this bridge construction. On the other hand, mudslides, property damage and loss of life elsewhere resulting from the heavy rains cannot be blamed solely on public officials - indeed there may be no one to blame for this natural disaster. But we do observe that many hilly areas have become more vulnerable to mudslides because of the denuding of the terrain for squatter housing developments, and because persons have been chopping down trees to make charcoal.

The example of our neighbours in Haiti should serve as a warning. There, mudslides occur as a matter of course. We have repeatedly called attention to the possibility of this danger being played out across areas in Jamaica. Of course, public officials have a role to play - and that is to enforce the regulations relating to zoning and protected areas. But, ultimately, residents also have a responsibility to themselves.

By building housing units on gully banks and on denuded hillsides they are putting their own lives at risk and a strain on the public purse.

Ultimately, however, public officials must be held accountable for botched engineering work that contributes to loss of life or property. There is a clear need for a monitoring agency that can sign off on projects and be itself subject to review for how it is doing its work. We are not suggesting that Jamaicans adopt the trigger-happy litigious mentality common to many in the United States. But as long as contractors are allowed to move on to another project despite having done a poor job elsewhere, and the public is left to pick up the tab in the form of taxes, so long will we have repeat disasters as happened in Port Maria last week. Somebody other than the taxpayer must be made to pay.

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