Theme:  “Sustaining The Education Plant
           In The Face of National Crisis”
 

I commend the Association of Tertiary Institutions in The Bahamas (ATIB) for recognizing the potential long-term harm to the education system and, in turn, long-term effects on national development, as a result of the damages of hurricanes and then responding in a timely manner to help ensure that relevant lessons can be learnt while consciousness of the risks are high.

Aristotle is reported to have opined that “Nature is as indifferent to tragedy as it is to man.”  We can extend this to acknowledge that the forces of Nature in the form of hurricanes are indifferent to the purpose for which structures have been built – namely schools, church, office, home or whatever.  Nature ignores us but the events of this summer have served to re-emphasize that it is unwise for us to ignore Nature.
 This is an important lesson because:
(i) History shows that from the 1940’s to the mid 1990’s Atlantic Hurricane activity had been considerably below historical averages – For example, “an average of 0.2 per annum against an average of 0.3 per year between 1899 and 1970.”
(ii) These years from the early 1940’s coincided with periods of tremendous change in The Bahamas including substantial economic growth, which fueled unprecedented expansion in structures and things of which the National education plant would be a part.

You are educators.  You are educators at the tertiary level one thing which differentiate educators at the tertiary level from educators at any other level is generally accepted to include a much higher degree of involvement with research.  Thus I submit that you are the ones who need to conduct the research to help the rest of us to understand if those changes which took place in The Bahamas were consistently done with due regard to Nature, including the reality that hurricane activity, in the fullness of time, is likely to be greater than what were being experienced at the time of the changes.

Consider for example what has happened to the general approach to the building of homes in The Bahamas from the early 1940’s to the present.  The house I grew up in was built up off the ground.  So much so that my friends and I could play under the floor.   Secondly, the windows were made of wood and each was kept open with a stick.  The house in Ross Corner was not unique.  In fact, it was the norm.

Mr. Trevor Bridgewater, who as the Chief Architect at Arawak Homes, would have designed more homes than any other Bahamian architect, calls the philosophy reflected in the old Bahamian architecture “common sense”.  For example, lifting the houses off the ground not only helped with cooling but also helped with flooding.  This is significant because insurance adjusters have pretty much established that about 75% of the damage for the recent hurricanes were caused by storm surge.

Secondly, the use of the wood windows with sticks eliminated the current need for hurricane shutters.  The windows themselves were the shutters.

Now obviously, the shifted to the so called “modern” architecture was to secure other benefits.  Life is often a matter of trade-offs and this situation is no different.   For example, the view from the corporate offices of Royal Star Assurance, overlooking Nassau’s harbour from the heights of Centreville Hill is special largely because of the openness and large area of glass.  But clearly the building was so “hurricane unfriendly” that as the hurricane approached it was not even practical to cover all of the glass as a protection from the winds of the hurricane.

So you, particularly as the administrators in the tertiary level institutions must challenge your colleagues in academia to find us “a third way”, in the area of design of a lot of our structures.
This is urgent because:
(i) In 1990 the prominent hurricane researcher Dr. William Gray predicted that the era of greatly reduced Atlantic activity was coming to an end.  “Climatology will eventually right itself” he asserted, “and we must expect a great increase in land falling major hurricanes in the coming decades.”
(ii) This prediction was before the Insurance industry will have paid something in the region of $800,000,000 in settling insurance claims resulting from Floyd, Michelle,
Frances and Jeanne, the four hurricanes that have hit The Bahamas since 1999.  This is an astounding sum and no doubt it will bring about significant changes in the insurance industry in terms of higher rates and more limits to insurability.  However, this steep cost of these storms is, in some measure, mitigated by the valuable lessons we can derive from the experiences of the past five years.  If we heed the storms’ messages, we will save lives, save homes, save businesses and vital public services.  We will save the schools and the education system that are vital to preserving a good future for this country.

The patterns of hurricanes from 1871 to date has resulted in what one source calls “the hit parade.”  A listing of places that have been affected by most hurricanes since that time.  There is “bad” news and “relatively good” news for The Bahamas from this list.  The bad news is that four places on the “top ten” list are in The Bahamas – Andros, Bimini, Grand Bahama and Abaco.  The relatively good news is that New Providence is only Thirty-fifth, on the list.

I refer to it as “relatively good” news because it has
immense implications for the country.  For example, there will probably be some among you who would question why insurance rates are so high on New Providence, in the face of what appears to be relatively insignificant damage from recent hurricanes.  And that is a valid question.

Simply, in terms of Risk Analysis there is rather compelling evidence that there should be a far larger differential in insurance rates for buildings on New Providence than on a number of Family Islands specifically, generally rates on New Providence could be lower but higher, much higher, on many Family Islands.  Since it is widely accepted that it is important to the long run welfare of The Bahamas that the Family Islands become more developed, many would see that such a shift in policy by the insurance industry would not likely to be helpful to overall National development.  For lets not forget, a most fundamental concept of insurance is that the “contributions of the many pay for the losses of the few.”  Unfortunately, because of factors such as the scattered nature of our islands, the limited pockets of development and the size of our population, when there is a catastrophic event, “the few” becomes “the many”, and the contributions can quickly become insufficient to pay the overall losses.

One more important and general comment about the macro
reality relative to protecting the educational plant.

You would, no doubt, appreciate that geography has a terribly
important influence on the thinking of international insurers.  Given that reality, when international re-insurers look at The Bahamas,
They see its proximity to Florida.  This significantly impacts how much capacity they will allocate to The Bahamas, and at what price.  In the area of re-insurance capacity, our largest economic ally, Florida, becomes our largest competitor.  It may surprise some of you but in terms of Risk Analysis, insurance rates are generally higher in Florida, and the US Government provides storm surge and flood insurance whereas it is insured by the private insurers in The Bahamas.  On balance therefore, it is probably fair to say that re-
insurers prefer Florida over The Bahamas meaning that supply and demand results in higher prices for us in The Bahamas.
 
For businesses generally, hurricanes create essentially two different risks:
(i) The interruption of operations.
(ii) The challenge to repair or replace as a result of damages.
 
Educational institutions differ from hurricanes generally because business interruption insurance is really not as meaningful as option for educational institutions as it is for businesses generally.  Of course this is not the case for those educational institutions which see themselves in strictly business terms – with a primary objective of producing a financial return at an acceptable level to investors.
 
Operating on the premise that the majority if not all of your member institutions do not see your mission in strictly commercial profit oriented terms, I turn to the second serious challenge – that of dealing with replacement and repair.

Educational establishments are environments that must be conducive to learning.  The environments have therefore, to be in excellent order if they are to be effective for this purpose.  Clearly therefore, even minor damage can result in a disproportionate disruption to the establishment’s activities.  It is important that damage avoidance be the priority, and to this end the building stock should be able to withstand hurricane force winds.  It is therefore, important that a key strategy to sustain the educational plant in the face of National disaster is to plan new buildings with “hurricane proofing” in mind.  In the view of many insurers this would include buildings which have standing seam steel roofs together with hurricane proof windows, both of which should be retrofitted to existing building stock whenever possible.
 
For the sake of aiding a return to normalcy after a hurricane, educational establishments should have the ability to produce their own power.  With a sound building and available power, there is no reason why an educational establishment should not be able to resume normal activities very quickly after a hurricane has struck, which is good for the students, the educators and the community as a whole.
 
Clearly “hurricane proofing” the educational stock will require a considerable capital investment, and this is really the key to our struggles in The Bahamas in dealing with the peril of hurricane.   The old adage of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is highly relevant.  Unfortunately in The Bahamas we do not always see the need for the ounce of prevention, but I’m afraid that we are going to have to change this attitude as it relates to our exposure to hurricanes.

If we are unable to hurricane proof our education stock then we are faced with potentially very large repair costs and significant disruption, or large insurance bills mitigating the repair costs but still with significant disruption.  You as administrators have to decide if you owe it to your students to do your utmost to hurricane proof your facilities to minimize any likely disruption to their studies.
 It is unfortunate that educational establishments do not seem to fair very well in hurricanes, and this seems to be the case whether we are talking about primary, secondary or tertiary establishments.  We often see many places of education closed for significant periods after hurricanes.  This is not unique to The Bahamas, in fact schools in the Cayman Islands made up almost 50% of the $140 million insurance claim on the Cayman Islands Government property insurance policy, following hurricane Ivan.  It is an interesting aside to note that the Cayman Island Government insures its buildings and other infrastructure, whilst successive governments in The Bahamas have adopted a strategy not doing so.  An important key for us all to recognize is that there is more to protection against hurricanes than insurance.  In fact, insurance does not, and was never meant to “protect” or provide security against disaster, but to provide a means of recovering from them.  I offer you a simple but important equation.  Good insurance coverage equals recovery; people coverage equals security.
 
To explain what I mean by this, let me offer the example of The College of The Bahamas in the last storm and the value of planning, teamwork, caring and a commitment to the common good that goes far beyond the call of duty.  It all started with the administrative team
leading the formulation of a health and safety plan, which includes a section on disaster management, outlining the roles the various departments of The College are to play in times of crises.   The plan required that, at the beginning of the hurricane season, storm shutters would be taken from storage, assessed for soundness, placed in the locations where they would be installed and labeled as such. It included a plan for securing electronic equipment and books, taking up as much as possible from the floor and covering with water resistant materials. It required the proactive mobilization of the Physical Plant Department to trim trees, remove debris and otherwise secure the property long before storm conditions were being experienced. It required the mobilization of the security force.  And it required a whole strategy to deal with the protection of information – for example, off site storage of back-up files.  The result of this planning was that The College’s main plant on New Providence sustained little damage. In Grand Bahama the damage was greater because of the unexpected level of sea surge, but it could have been much more. I am pleased to say that the Northern Bahamas Campus Library lost not a single book and only a single computer. Even more
pleasing is the fact that despite delays in the start of classes, all campuses will be able to complete the semester on time.

Now, I would like to share with you the real basis of our ability to recover so quickly—the dedicated administration and staff of The College of The Bahamas, who are obviously committed to ATIB’s dictum that we must ensure the survival of our schools. People like ATIB’s president Dr. Rhonda Chipman-Johnson and Mr. Anthony Burrows, our Estates Administrator, sacrificed much personal time to see that The College was secure.  Following the passage of the storm, COB’s new President and his faculty and staff could be seen cleaning up the Oakes Field Campus.  This all had other benefits for the college.  When it was again possible to travel to Grand Bahama, which College personnel knew to have been hard hit, they immediately mobilized relief supplies and took an assessment and repair team to rescue the Northern Campus. On that trip and subsequent visits, COB craftsmen flushed the electrical system, repaired masonry and other damages to the buildings and trailers. They painted and built new shelving.

The story of dedication and cooperative action multiplied ten-fold on Grand Bahama. When they might have been at home spending more time securing personal property, the Campus staff, led by Dr. Coralee Kelly, Assistant Vice President, worked round the clock to secure College property. Our College family obviously sought to protect the greater good. They took ownership of College property and fought to save it as they would their own. I offer the highest commendation for these selfless actions.

In closing, I must point out that insuring our public systems and private properties will always require capital outlay by government, businesses, and homeowners alike. Unfortunately for us all, this is an inevitable cost of living in a hurricane zone.  At the same time, however, we can take comfort in the fact that we possess some of the most powerful weapons against disaster—the power to take responsibility, the power to take charge and share our strengths, skills and resourcefulness for the common good. Finally, we have the power to learn from past experiences an incorporate them into our planning and responses from here on in. Take heart and take ownership—This is where true security lies and it carries no price tag, but incalculable rewards.