Belize hangs tough

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 28, 2001

The birds, maybe parrots, were chirping in the background but Mark Espat was hardly cheerful. The minister of tourism for Belize was calling from his office in Belize City, after returning from a helicopter and ground tour of the damage wrought by Hurricane Iris.

As hurricanes go, this one drew little notice in the Tampa Bay area once we knew it was headed west, not east, through the Caribbean Sea. But the effects when it hit Belize, south of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the night of Oct. 8 will be felt for many months. For the relatives and friends of some Americans on a scuba-diving trip there, the memories will last not months but forever.

The divers, from Virginia, decided to ride out the hurricane aboard their 120-foot ship, moored in a cove.

It was a tragic mistake. The winds reached 140 miles per hour, tearing loose the dive boat, flipping it upside down and killing 20 people on board.

Remarkably, those were the only deaths as the storm quickly dissipated. But thousands of Belizeans were left without homes, most of the valuable banana crop was destroyed and, Espat said, it will take tourism interests "three to six months to make all the repairs."

He flew over the area most affected, the seaside peninsula villages of Placencia and Independence "two hours after the all-clear was given. About 75 percent of the small resorts have some damage."

This area is particularly attractive for its white-sand beaches and warm water. While scuba divers motor out to one of the world's prime reefs, snorkelers stay close to land to see manatees. Other visitors go kayaking or bird-watching.

The peninsula has about 600 rooms in about 60 small hotels and guesthouses. Espat estimates about 75 percent of these structures "have some damage, from significant (structural) damage to water damage to (needing) roof repairs."

He said preliminary damage estimates were $15-million to $20-million in U.S. funds to these lodgings, and another $4-million to $5-million "collateral damage to the area's bars, gift shops, the tour operators' vessels and vehicles."

Placencia village was "devastated," according to Timoteo Mes, the manager of one of the larger resorts there. He e-mailed his comments to Magnum Belize, a Minnesota tour operator that has been sending tourists to the country for 15 years.

Magnum represents 45 resorts throughout the country, Kaleh Lehmann told me from the company office in Detroit Lakes. Yet the damage from Iris was so contained that "only two or three families who had current reservations have been rerouted to other resorts in Belize," said Kehmann, one of the company's five reservations agents.

Of course the storm hit other regions. By government accounts, Iris destroyed 3,178 homes, 19 schools and two police stations, and damaged 82 hotels all told, many owned by Americans who have migrated to Belize.

Officials counted 19,880 of its 225,000 residents affected in one way or another.

Worse than the damage to the tourism infrastructure was the loss of 7,880 acres of citrus trees and 5,512 acres on banana planations -- about 90 percent of the country's banana crop -- plus acres of cacao, rice and corn production.

For agriculture alone, the government estimates about $59-million in damages and lost revenue.

But it is the shuttered tourist facilities that Americans will notice most, for vacationers usually see foreign destinations in terms of their hotels, restaurants and historical sites.

Tourism, including sport-fishing, trekking the rain forests and visiting Mayan ruins, was Belize's No. 2 industry, behind agriculture.

The nation was rapidly becoming a prime destination for ecotourism, averaging 6 percent annual increases in tourism revenue during the 1990s. Last year, about 182,000 visitors vacationed there.

"There were about 1,500 (tourism) workers" in the Placencia area, Espat said, "and I suspect they will move to other tourism areas" in Belize. "We have seen rebookings, to places in the north . . . but Thanksgiving is the traditional start of our high season.

"We believe recovery time will be rather quick, three months for most of the places . . . But we feel as if we have suffered a one-two punch: The entire world's tourism industry suffered after the terrorism attacks of Sept. 11.

"We were just getting our feet back on the ground again," after some concerned travelers canceled reservations. "Iris knocked us back down, but we are very confident we can recover."

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