REGIONAL disaster management and relief authorities are predicting that it will cost Dominica several billions of dollars to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria, which struck the Eastern Caribbean island last week, killing an estimated 20 people and leaving the small island nation in devastation.

In the wake of the category five hurricane, there have been reports of persons desperately in need of food and shelter, while there have also been reports of security threats in the capital, Roseau.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skeritt, in a live broadcast last Thursday from Antigua, described the devastation as a “war zone”, where “every village, street, and person in Dominica was impacted”.

“If Erica was in the region of a half-a-billion EC dollars, this is going to be multiple times that. The entire agricultural sector is down, the tourism sector took a significant impact (and) those are two primary areas of the economy of Dominica. The infrastructure itself is going to have to be rebuilt and hardened.” – CDEMA Head, Ronald Jackson

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