He Fixed Dozens of Roofs After Melissa. Nobody Fixed His

• Bigby rode out Melissa in his garage car
• He then repaired dozens of neighbours’ roofs
• His own family got no roofing assistance
• Straps can withstand up to 155 mph if installed correctly

Seven months after Hurricane Melissa tore the roof off his family home, a roofer known as Bigby finally got around to rebuilding his own structure, after spending months repairing dozens of roofs across his community first. I worked on a whole heap of houses. And even in the neighbourhood, I use hurricane straps on those, he told the Jamaica Observer. His own home received no such assistance: we don’t get any roofing assistance, he said. Everything that you see is on us.

Bigby rode out the storm itself in his car, parked inside the garage, after watching a star apple tree fall onto his house and the roof begin to lift. When the zinc started to fly, I stood in a room and saw when the roof was shaking. I ran out and went into the car in the garage where I roughed it out for about two weeks, he said. His family’s home was assessed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security roughly three weeks after the storm, an assessment that, by his account, never translated into actual roofing assistance.

His story lands against a national push that took months to build real momentum. The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management relaunched its Strap Up Jamaica campaign in February, with Information Officer Joyce Reynolds Robinson framing it directly around what Beryl and Melissa had already shown: hurricane straps will reduce wind damage to your home and will secure your roof to the wall plate, tested to significantly reduce roof failure in strong winds. Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation City Engineer Xavier Chevannes was specific about the ceiling that proper installation actually buys: if properly used, hurricane straps can and will withstand hurricane speeds up to 155 miles per hour, provided rafter spacing and installation follow the International Building Code, a standard he said is frequently skipped even when straps themselves are used.

The Incorporated Master Builders Association of Jamaica endorsed the campaign, with president Richard Mullings acknowledging the honest trade-off: building in accordance with established standards may require higher upfront costs, but it delivers substantial long-term durability and resilience. Bigby’s own experience captures both halves of that trade-off from the inside, a tradesman who spent the months after Melissa installing exactly the protection the national campaign now promotes, on every roof but his own, until there was finally time left over.

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