Duty over despair

Two Montego Bay-based employees of Lifespan are being hailed as quiet heroes of Hurricane Melissa, after choosing duty over despair in the days when their own lives were upended by crisis.

When Hurricane Melissa barrelled across western Jamaica, it flattened homes, stole sleep, and left many residents wondering how they would start life again. In the middle of that uncertainty, Lifespan Sales Associate Kayla Scott and her colleague Nickolas Brown, a warehouse and inventory clerk, held on to one simple conviction: even when everything feels broken, there is still work to be done and people to be served.

Their stories, though deeply personal, speak to a wider national character – a Jamaica that has learned, storm after storm, to get back up, brush off the debris and get on with the business of living.

In the lead-up to the hurricane, Kayla’s circumstances were the same as most working Jamaicans – early mornings, breakfast with family, and then off to work. That rhythm was abruptly interrupted when she left her home in Hanover to go to Montego Bay for safety, then had to be evacuated because of the impact of the hurricane. While her mother and grandmother shouldered much of the impact at home, Kayla watched the damage piling up around the city.

When the winds died down and the true scale of the devastation became clear, she knew one thing for certain: people would need water, supplies and a place that signalled some return to normal. So, on the Friday morning after the hurricane, at 6:30 a.m., she unlocked the doors of the Lifespan MoBay office and went to work.

For her, it was not a grand gesture but a natural response. Family support meant she could focus on her role; a role she knew customers would depend on now more than ever. As far as Kayla knew, her usual customers were facing their own losses and would come in needing help. In her words and actions, the message was simple: things needed to get done, and she was prepared to do them.

Nickolas’ path to that same office door was much rougher. A single parent with a baby and responsibility for a teenager, he entered the hurricane already carrying the weight of his family’s safety and future on his shoulders. By the time Melissa was gone, that future looked painfully uncertain. His home had been destroyed; documents, clothing and the tangible markers of stability were gone. But, one thing Nickolas had was hope.

MAKESHIFT SHELTER

With nowhere else to go, Nickolas and the children spent nights in a bus, turning the vehicle into a makeshift shelter. It was an experience that could easily have broken his spirit. Instead, he made a decision that speaks volumes about his character – he showed up to work. Barefoot, stripped of possessions but not of resolve, he walked into the office to carry out his duties, as he knew he was needed.

Both employees speak of the workplace as more than a job. For Kayla, returning to an intact office gave her something vital: purpose. In a context where so much had changed, the familiarity of the counter, the routine of attending to customers, and the knowledge that she was needed helped to steady her mind. She admits that, if the office itself had been destroyed, finding the strength to return would have been far more difficult. For her, the mental stability that her routine at the office gave her was one of her strongest coping mechanisms in the days following the hurricane.

Nickolas describes a similar effect. The act of putting in a day’s work helped him to focus on more than loss. The office allowed him to show up, not as a victim, but as a professional and a provider. Amid his uncertainty over housing, that identity mattered. For him, his greatest concern was his inability to look professional at work, because of the loss of his clothes.

Both Kayla and Nickolas highlight the support they received from Lifespan’s leadership and colleagues. They recount the warmth of repeated check-ins, the managers who called to ask how they were coping, and the tangible assistance extended to staff affected by the storm. Those gestures, they say, went beyond policy and felt genuinely human.

In a small office in Montego Bay, the two employees have turned personal hardship into a public lesson in courage, in determination, and in service. Their story reminds the nation that while hurricanes can rip roofs from houses, they cannot easily tear away the resolve of a resilient people determined to stand by each other and keep moving forward.