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Minister Melvin Hulse, Minister of NEMO
"We are going to get a cost for our people. We flew over, yes we have identified in preliminary stages, we took care of about 4,000 people last night. And Judith who was really there, so anybody who knows of family that needs relief assistant you can coordinate with Ms. Alpuche she is the CEO of Human Resources. We have to do it, we can't have lines cross, we have to have clear lines of implementation because we have to account and we have to reach everybody, that is the fact of life and there are some people about 100 people who do not have a home to go back to so Judith will be taking care of them until such time, there are appropriate place to put them. The fact is that we have had over 200 people that got affected already. We are talking about a few areas that I will identify up in Belize Rural, we have in Hattieville and Gracie Rock and we have in Gales Point, Mullings River, we got up in Cayo we got several villages. There was one last night in Roaring Creek and I know that there is a tremendous amount back in Cohune Walk, San Martin, Las Flores, Salvapan and Maya Mopan."

While all those areas were affected, National Coordinator of NEMO Noreen Fairweather says that based on information to the National EOC and aerial reconnaissance, the preliminary estimates of damage are in the millions, which doesn't include damage to the tourism industry and the loss of utilities, particularly electricity:

Noreen Fairweather, National Coordinator of NEMO
"We have in term of damages to homes over 150-200 homes. we are looking at some preliminary figures around 3.6 million dollars. Recover works and when I say recovery works speaking to specifically the basic clearing of the roads and highways, the removal of the trees and debris and putting things back in order countrywide not recovery in terms of replacing any structural work that may have been done on our road network, bridges, culverts etc. this is just recovery for removal of debris and other things that are blocking the roads and in the city etc. Our estimate for that is around a million dollars. Throughout the passage of Hurricane Richard we had over 4,600 plus people in shelter. Unfortunately with some of those houses going down and people losing roof, sidings, there after persons that we will have to continue to accommodate and support in shelter with some sort of relief supplies; feeding and bedding. We have an estimate of about $100,000.00 that will meet those expenses given a certain timeframe. We feel that we can get them back to some semblance of normalcy. The citrus industry really took a great hit, when we flew over this morning. When we fly over the orchards it looks great but as the chopper went down all the fruits were on the ground; all the grapefruits and all the oranges were literally on the ground. The trees are up, a couple went down but all the fruits were on the ground. We gave an initial estimate and after speaking to the people from the industry they had narrowed it down, they are a little bit hesitant to come up with some figures for us obviously they were doing their assessments and so on but at the end of the day our ballpark estimate base on their experience we came up to 29.1 million dollars loss in the citrus industry."

In the face of all that destruction as we try to pick up the pieces one thing remains clear, no lives were lost, said Prime Minister Barrow, who gave his word on helping Belizeans to recover from their loss in Hurricane Richard:

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
"I have re-confirmed with the minister and with the NEMO director that there is no death that is directory attributable to Hurricane Richard so we've come through this thing without loss of life and for that I think we must be extremely grateful. My job really is to find the money. My job really is to assure all those that have been affected especially in terms of their homes having been destroyed or their roofs having been flown off or at least zincs on the roofs having been lifted off. My job is to assure these people that each and every last one of them will have his or her home repaired or rebuilt as the case may be. Don't press me too hard on where the money is going to come from but I make a solemn commitment that in fact from the various sources that we have already look at we are going to find the money. we of course sympathize greatly with those that have suffered this kind of damage to their homes and to their property I want them to know that in addition to reconstructing homes or repairing homes for as long as is necessary NEMO is determined to assist in others ways; to assist with the where it all to assist with food packages, the people that were in the shelters throughout the country, in most cases were given a meal and this kind of outreach, this kind of assistance, this kind of looking after the welfare of our people will continue."