A veteran engineer says disaster resilience should be a key factor when Jamaicans decide which home to buy and where to live, as the island prepares to mark a global day on disaster risk with the theme “Resilience Starts at Home”.
KINGSTON, Jamaica, 10 October 2026, Jamaicans buying or building a home should treat its ability to withstand hurricanes, floods, landslides and earthquakes as part of the decision itself, not an afterthought, according to Lenworth Kelly, a past president of both the Incorporated Master Builders Association of Jamaica and the Jamaica Institution of Engineers. Speaking at a Jamaica Information Service Think Tank on 7 October, he urged prospective owners to follow building codes, use qualified professionals and obtain proper reports before buying an existing house. The message comes almost a year after Hurricane Melissa, with many households still rebuilding and insurance claims still being worked through.
A global theme with a local edge
The advice is timed for the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on Tuesday, 13 October. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction announced “Resilience Starts at Home” as this year’s theme in June, presenting the household as the place where preparing for disaster begins. Its framing shares out responsibility: governments for risk informed land use plans, building standards and getting hazard information to communities; the private sector for where and how homes are built, financed and insured; and households for acting on that knowledge when they have the means to do so. In Jamaica, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management is leading the observance, the Jamaica Information Service reported.
Kelly’s argument was practical rather than ceremonial. A home is the biggest investment most people will make, he said, so it should be built to resist natural events, and the right builders and professionals should be engaged from the start. “Mitigation is preventing dangers that may happen,” he said, a definition that puts the emphasis on decisions taken long before any storm warning.
Where the risk is decided
Much of a home’s exposure is fixed before a block is laid. Kelly singled out flood prone land and unstable slopes, warning against stripping vegetation or cutting into hillsides without following development requirements. Carve a ledge into a bare slope, he cautioned, and “the rains will come and your house will go like the rest of the dirt.” For buyers, that makes the site itself, and how it has been prepared, at least as important as the finishes inside.
He also pointed to a hazard that rarely features in household planning. Talk of disaster risk tends to centre on hurricanes, floods and wind, he noted, and people do not think about earthquakes. His answer was that earthquake mitigation has to be built in at the design and construction stages. That is no small point on an island that lies in a seismically active part of the Caribbean.
On approvals, Kelly said building plans should be approved by the relevant municipal corporation so that construction follows the plans submitted. Under the Building Act, in force since January 2019, municipal corporations serve as local building authorities, and the Act provides for the adoption and application of the National Building Code. For a buyer, approval is best understood less as paperwork than as an independent check that a design was assessed against minimum standards before money was committed.
What a buyer should ask for
For anyone purchasing an existing property, Kelly recommended a structural report, a surveyor’s report and a valuation report, so that buyers can judge whether the house will stand up and protect the family in a disaster. In general terms, each document answers a different question. A structural assessment considers how the building is put together and its condition. A survey deals with the boundaries of the plot and how it sits on the land. A valuation, which lenders typically require, puts a figure on the property. Because the valuation is often the one report a mortgage process demands, buyers should be clear that it is not a substitute for the other two.
Melissa sharpened the cost of getting this wrong. In July, the Insurance Association of Jamaica urged owners to check that their sums insured reflect what it would actually cost to rebuild, as disputes over the average clause mounted. As The Gleaner explained at the time, a home insured for 70 per cent of its replacement value could see only 70 per cent of a valid partial loss claim paid, with the deductible still applied on top. The Financial Services Commission has been reviewing how insurers apply that clause to Melissa claims, and the regulator aims to publish a verified assessment of the claims on 16 October, subject to the completeness of insurers’ submissions, according to the Jamaica Observer. Adequate cover and a sound structure work together; neither fully compensates for the absence of the other.
Resilience as a measure of value
There is a quiet shift in what Jamaicans are being asked to value. For generations, owning land and putting up a house, often room by room as money allowed, has been a trusted route to security. That instinct remains sound, but Melissa has shown that the question is no longer simply whether a family owns its home, but whether that home will still be standing, and affordable to repair, after the next major event.
For the property market, any change is likely to come gradually. Buyers who ask for structural reports and check approvals will put more pressure on sellers and developers to document how a home was built and where. Homes on stable, well drained land with clear approvals may come to command more confidence, while informally built or poorly sited properties could face harder questions from lenders and insurers. With rebuilding still under way and the hurricane season running until the end of November, the sensible course for anyone in the market is to treat resilience as part of what they are paying for, and to ask for the evidence before they sign.
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