Hurricane Melissa Relief in Jamaica coming from near and far

CHARLOTTE, NC – In the immediate aftermath of Melissa, the staff at the North Carolina based Samaritan’s Purse were wings up with supplies for people living amongst the destruction.

Samaritan’s Purse medical director for the field hospital there, Peter Holz said,” Just the widespread path that the hurricane left spared nothing,”

Melissa claimed the lives of 32 people alone in Jamaica.

Damaging winds and floodwaters left the infrastructure destroyed where Melissa made landfall in Black River, including the city’s hospital, that’s where Peter Holz and the team with Samaritan’s Purse stepped in.

Holz said,  “the hospital here in Black River it’s 100% unfunctional for all intents and purposes.”

Their impact so far has been massive, between their field hospital and medical field teams Samaritan’s Purse has delivered 15 thousand pieces of tarp, more than 2,000 house water filters, and 8,000 solar lights.

Back in North Carolina Crav’n Caribbean owner, Carlos Abrahams is doing what he can to give back to his home country and family on the island.

He’s donating a portion of his proceeds at his business to the relief efforts and shipping donated goods over.

Abrahams said, “A lot of people lost everything some people’s roofs came off my aunt her roof started to come off it didn’t come all the way off so that’s pretty good but some people lost everything.”

Some of those people are Mervin and Kim Ricketts’ family living in Bluefields Jamaica, not too far from where Melissa made landfall.

“It’s just so heartbreaking to see our home and our home country just to be leveled to be destroyed like that and obviously our family to suffer the way they are suffering now, it breaks our hearts,” said Kim.

The Florida father and daughter say 8 homes and more than 30 of their family members are affected by varying levels of destruction from the hurricane.

Even stateside they knew they had to do something.

“The first image we got was when they sent that Starlink call, they actually sent some footage of what happened,” said Mervin,  “and right away we didn’t even wait for them to say hey can you help us, we saw that and we knew that that was devastating, we saw the need right away.”

Using the power of the internet the two started a fundraiser that has so far raised more than 13 thousand dollars, to deal with their loved ones biggest needs.

On a larger scale, Holz said after a devastating event like this the priorities go beyond shelter.

“Bad water,” said Holz,  “people are drinking dirty water so the illness that go along with that. People are becoming dehydrated because they don’t have clean water and they’re not drinking water. But a really big need after storms honestly is diabetes, of course their refrigerated insulin goes bad or they lose it, it’s not going to be long before you’re having a crisis and so we’ve seen quite amount of illness called diabetic ketoacidosis.”

The road to recovery after a disaster is uphill but still those near and far remain hopeful.

“We look forward to Jamaica being able to rebuild as a whole,” said Kim, “we are praying for everyone who has been impacted we know it’s not just our family we know so many people need help out there so we are praying for everyone and we hope so much that Jamaica can bounce back.”