By Maria Tsvetkova, Helen Coster and Aleksandra Michalska
NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York chef Kemoy Gordon last spoke to his cousin in Jamaica on Monday, as his family prepared to leave their beachside home on the western part of the Caribbean island ahead of Hurricane Melissa. That was the last time he made contact with them.
“I haven’t heard from them since. The phone line is off, the electricity is off. I can’t get in contact with anybody down there,” said Gordon, 34, who works in a Jamaican bakery in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. “I don’t know what’s going on and don’t know how they are affected.”
Gordon is among the roughly 218,000 New York City residents with Jamaican roots, many of whom are worried about friends and loved ones in their homeland, battered this week by the strongest storm in the island-nation’s recorded history.
Hurricane Melissa, with sustained winds of 185 mph (298 kph) when it made landfall, destroyed homes, uprooted trees and washed out roads before moving on to eastern Cuba. With communications compromised or cut off completely, the full extent of the damage is unknown, especially in the remote parts of the mountainous island.
On Wednesday, drone video from St. Elizabeth Parish, where Gordon’s family lives, showed swaths of land covered in muddy water and many fallen palm trees. The destroyed interiors of some flooded houses were visible through blown-off roofs. Traffic moved slowly on a two-lane road, parts of which were submerged.
TRICKLE OF INFORMATION
Gordon grew up in Treasure Beach in southwestern Jamaica, where the storm crashed ashore. His aunt, who raised him from the age of 10 after his mother moved overseas, is among relatives he can’t reach now.
He hopes his family escaped the worst of the devastation by moving farther from the shore in nearby Great Bay, where relatives live. The only information he has received comes from a friend who sent him videos of the devastation left by the storm.
“I know there’s a lot of flooding, a lot of roofs blown off,” he said in an interview. “I hope everything can get back to how it was.”
Gordon wants to send back help but is waiting to hear from the family to see what they need.
“Everybody’s trying to come together right now to see what we can do, how we can bring stuff together, so we can send back to help,” Gordon said.
RELIEF EFFORTS INITIATED
Family members watching the storm’s aftermath from a distance are eager to turn feelings of helplessness into action.
Fewer than 24 hours after the storm struck Jamaica, international relief efforts are slowly coming together.
The Caribbean Disaster Relief and Recovery Alliance, a Maryland nonprofit that began in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma – which devastated parts of the Caribbean and southern United States in 2017 – has lined up a shipping service that can also store collections, according to Loughton Sargeant, the group’s treasurer. The alliance is meeting on Tuesday night to begin mobilizing collection efforts.
The New York-based nonprofit American Friends of Jamaica, which supports Jamaican charitable organizations, has raised almost $290,000 to support relief efforts and created a $1 million matching fund underwritten by its board.
U.S. rescue teams, along with lifesaving supplies, were en route to hurricane-affected areas on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X.
The United Nations said it is in contact with Jamaican authorities to assess needs and assist those impacted by the storm.
The country’s disaster response agency has started a hurricane relief donation fund and created a “preliminary needs” list that includes health and shelter supplies.
PRAYERS FROM AFAR
New York resident Krystal Douglas, 35, is originally from St. Catherine Parish just west of the capital Kingston, which sustained less damage than other parts of the island.
Douglas, a manager of a Jamaican restaurant in Harlem, moved to the United States in her early 20s and has family and friends still living on the island, some of them in Kingston. Everyone was fine so far, she said.
“I’m very worried about a lot of people down there, but I pray that everybody will be alright,” Douglas said.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova, Helen Coster, Aleksandra Michalska in New York; Additional reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica; Editing by Frank McGurty and Stephen Coates)
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