No Windows, No Bell Towers, No Organ: A Virgin Gorda Church Waited Ten Months to Go Home After Irma

• St Mary the Virgin, the only Episcopal church on Virgin Gorda, lost every window to Irma
• Its bell towers collapsed, the organ was destroyed and the pavilion was totalled
• The congregation did not return to the church until July 2018
• Damage to church properties from Irma and Maria was put at US$7 million

When Hurricane Irma struck the British Virgin Islands in September 2017, followed 16 days later by Maria, St Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church on Virgin Gorda took a battering. Episcopal News Service reported a year later that the 135-year-old church, the only Episcopal congregation on the island, had lost all its windows, its bell towers had collapsed and its organ was destroyed.

The damage reached across the church’s 3.5-acre property overlooking the Atlantic. Shingles were blown off the roof, the rectory was damaged, a music school addition crumbled and the pavilion used for jazz concerts and theatre was totalled. The congregation did not return to worship in the church until July 2018. The report put damage to church properties from the two storms at US$7 million.

The homes of parishioners suffered too. The storms damaged more than 95% of structures on the island. Gladstone Walters, the church’s 86-year-old bell ringer, had moved back into his damaged house near the ferry terminal because he could not afford repairs. Senior warden Vanessa Rymer noted that the church’s conch-shell baptismal font had survived. Denise Reovan, a vestry member, said: “What we knew as normalcy will never happen again.”

The parish responded by launching a “Lunch for a Bunch” programme to feed seniors, funded by a mini-grant, while it worked on its own buildings.

The Virgin Gorda account shows how a church’s property and its members’ homes are damaged together, and how a congregation must decide between repairing its own buildings and helping families who cannot fix theirs. Jamaican churches going through the same questions after Hurricane Melissa may find the balance struck here useful: restore the sanctuary, but keep an eye on elderly members who are living in damaged houses they cannot afford to repair, and use church networks to connect them with help.

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