“In Half an Hour, Carriacou Was Flattened”: Hurricane Beryl Tears the Roof Off a Small Island Church

• Hurricane Beryl hit Carriacou, Grenada, as a Category 4 storm in July 2024
• The Carriacou Church of Christ lost the roof of its two-storey building
• Most of its roughly 30 regular worshippers lost roofs or entire homes
• A Jamaica-based preaching school director was assessing damage and needs

When Hurricane Beryl swept over the Grenadian island of Carriacou at the start of July 2024, it took more than homes. The Christian Chronicle reported on 5 July 2024 that the Carriacou Church of Christ, a congregation of about 30 weekly worshippers, lost the roof of its white, two-storey building, and the structure suffered further damage.

The loss was compounded by what happened to the congregation itself. Minister Chrispin Hosten said most of the church’s members had lost roofs or their entire homes. “The whole island (lies in) destruction. The members are in need of food, water and clothing,” he said. Grenada’s Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, summed up the scale of the destruction on the island of about 9,600 people: “In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened.”

The response began within the wider church network. Ossafa Gordon, minister of the Grand Anse Church of Christ on Grenada’s main island, was coordinating the collection of aid, and churches elsewhere in the region were gathering supplies. The report noted that Gladwyn Kiddoe, director of the Jamaica School of Preaching and Biblical Studies in Kingston, was assessing damage and needs, and the relief charity Healing Hands International was accepting donations.

For a small congregation, the loss of a roof is not just a repair job. It removes the one space where members meet, often at the same moment that those members are dealing with the loss of their own houses. Rebuilding the church competes directly with rebuilding homes for time, money, materials and labour, and small churches rarely carry the kind of insurance that would cover a full replacement.

The storm did not stop at Grenada. As it moved west, Beryl raked Jamaica’s southern coast, leaving churches and homes in parishes such as St Elizabeth badly damaged. The Carriacou experience is a reminder for Jamaican congregations to check what their property insurance actually covers, to keep an up-to-date record of their buildings and contents, and to build links with sister churches across the region before disaster strikes. Those connections, like the one between Carriacou and a preaching school in Kingston, are often what gets roofs back on when public relief is stretched thin.

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