History in ruins. The remnants of 74-year-old Centenary School at Bethlehem College. - Photos by Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

Yardley Chase, a quaint village situated at the top of a massive cliff, provides a spectacular view of the Caribbean Sea, breathtaking in its beauty; deceptive today in its tranquility. Nearby stands the lookout point at the very lip of the cliff, where legend has it that two young lovers leapt to their death in centuries past to escape the wrath of a vengeful pursuer.

Seventy-two hours before my visit, another avenger - this one sent by mother nature - was in hot pursuit, and the options for escape seemed almost as hopeless.

From a distance, they could be seen: Two men on what remained of a housetop, one with a notebook in hand scribbling furiously, the other with a look of consternation on his face. Yet, as soon as The Sunday Gleaner team hailed them from below, their faces broke out in friendly smiles.

"Come on up, if you are not afraid o Joe Smith, the homeowner invited. We did not need a second invitation to hear his story.

Losing their roof

At 5:00 p.m. that fateful Sunday afternoon, Mr. Smith was sitting on his verandah, listening to radio reports of Hurricane Dean's path of destruction, wondering how bad the hit would be.

Suddenly, he heard a swooshing sound past his house. Next he looked up across the road. "Oh, no! Not again!" His neighbours, Maxwell and Delarica Myers, were in the process of losing their roof, only three years after they suffered a similar fate courtesy of Hurricane Ivan. He and his two sons watched spellbound as the giant force went to work, peeling away the Myers' aluminium roof piece by piece, leaving behind spindly pieces of lumber, jutting out like the protruding ribs of a starving man, embarrassed in his nakedness.

He nevertheless had a feeling of personal assurance. After all, his roof had withstood 'Ivan'. He got up and went into his kitchen, only to see water seeping down the wall. The next moment, they were scurrying for shelter in the small piece of the house that still had a semblance of cover.

Now, here he stood, waiting for his carpenter friend, Erwin 'Dudes' McIntosh, to give him the dreaded estimate.

Mrs. Myers sat on thebed. An experienced teacher, she is usually in command. Today, however, her countenance bore a look of despair. Her husband tried to put on a brave face, but he couldn't completely conceal his concern. Four years ago it cost them $400,000 to replace their roof. This time it is going to cost $600,000. The hope, however, is that this will be a permanent fix - a less attractive but more secure concrete roof.

After all, it was to the concrete-roofed washroom that they had to flee on Sunday evening, and there they remained huddled in terror until the following morning when they emerged to survey the damage - zinc sheets scattered all around, coconut and palm trees uprooted or snapped midway up their massive trunks.

Same picture

Heather Murray, principal of Hampton School.

All around, it is the same picture of devastation - roofs strewn across a wide expanse, pieces of zinc wrapped around tree limbs like freshly hung laundry.

Mrs. Myers keeps reliving the experience.

"I kept hearing the nails coming out of the zinc … Maybe if I had not experienced (Hurricane) Ivan I could have handled it a little better, but I just couldn't take another one," she explained, with a deep sigh.

Shirley Staple estimates that, of the 75 houses in the 'Big Yard' section of Yardley Chase, 65 were severely damaged.

Donet Andrade slept with two young children shielded by her body in an outhouse, like a mother hen protecting her chicks. The remnant of her house is a depressing shell; a massive piece of the roof lying in a crumpled heap. "De storm lick we whey! We need help," she cries plaintively while looking towards the heavens.

Educational hub hit

From Yardley Chase, we made our way down to Southfield and then on up to visit the educational hub of the parish: three institutions of distinction and ageless relevance. Munro College still evokes in me that sense of awe that I felt as a first former on my first day 32 years ago. Up the long willowtree-lined driveway there were little bits of evidence that nature had not been kind to 'the college' (really a high school for boys), now in its 151st year.

"Well, at least they are still standing," I thought, with some relief, looking to my left at the majestic old boarding houses - Coke House, and Pearman Calder and the beautiful chapel, adorned with stained glass windows.

That feeling of relief was sullied somewhat when I caught sight of the roofless Harrison Memorial Library, named after one of the most famous headmasters. Here, at the converted gymnasium right across from the chapel, members of the library staff were busy combing through the rubble to salvage what they could of the valuable collection - books acquired just three years after 'Ivan' did similar violence to the building. Thankfully, many had been stored elsewhere before the storm arrived.

"It is a heavy loss and we will have to establish another library," said Branford Gayle, the Munro old-boy-turned-headmaster. That, he said, would be an immediate major priority.

Neither was the Richard B. Roper auditorium spared damage, adding to the anticipated repair bill of close to $10 million.

Greater beating

It is likely to be months before Paul Thompson gets back into the principal's cottage at Bethlehem College.

Three miles further to the west, Hampton School, Munro's sister institution for girls, took an even greater beating.

The damage was definitely worse than that wrought by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, according to Mrs. Heather Murray, the principal. Already, she and her 'take-charge' secretary had a comprehensive list of the damaged areas and equipment loss, in the order of $30 million. Among the worst-affected buildings, the principal explained, were the information technology lab, the chapel and music room, and the principal's cottage.

Despite these setbacks, however, school is set to open for the new school year on September 10.

Bethlehem Moravian College, the 146-year-old institution located a bit further to the west, in Malvern, had, it seemed, been battered even more than Munro and Hampton.

Just in from the entrance on the right, a significant portion of Centenary Building, established in 1933, lay in ruins, its ageing walls crushed to the ground by the force of 'Dean's' winds. But even more modern buildings did not escape, with significant roof damage; even where new roofs had been installed after the passage of 'Ivan'.

Paul Thompson, the principal, was incensed at the apparently shoddy workmanship employed in the installation of those roofs, financed in some cases by substantial international grant funding.

Personal loss

He and his family did not escape personal loss, having to run for cover in the midst of the storm from his cottage. It will take months to repair, he estimates.

En route to Treasure Beach on the Pedro Plains next, we passed more roof damage and downed electricity poles and trees in Southfield and Flagaman.

Immediately apparent in Treasure Beach was that there was far less road damage this time than that wrought by 'Ivan' and there was no sign of flooding from Great Pond. There, at the last moment, the much-talked-about canal to the sea, almost two years in the making, had been opened to take off excess water.

That should have been great news for Keith George Stone, whose house, perched on the very edge of the pond, had been swallowed up by the water during the passage of hurricanes 'Ivan' and 'Wilma'.

He was, therefore, fairly relaxed this time, until suddenly, one of the blades of his ceiling fan went flying across the room, almost decapitating him.

"Now, where did that come from?" he wondered. He did not have to wait long for an answer.

"The whole roof lifted and went over in the fields and then the rains came down and we couldn't out because of flying debris, so we had to stay there in the rain until 10 o'clock," he recounted.

"God is not with me," the 68-year-old British expatriate mumbled disconsolately.Nevertheless, he is not ready to give up, having spent the last 13 years of his life here, in a seemingly endless battle with nature.