For a group of women packing barrels with emergency supplies at a nightclub in the Montreal borough of LaSalle on Monday, time is critical.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see what’s going on,” Samantha Donnette Spence said.
She and the others, who all have family in Jamaica, are helping to collect relief supplies as quickly as possible to send to Jamaica, one week after Hurricane Melissa ripped through the Caribbean island as a Category 5 storm.
“We were seeing family members actually having to hold up the windows in the home to ensure that the windows didn’t blow off,” Rashida Geddes said.
The storm made landfall with wind speeds reaching nearly 300 kilometres per hour. It sliced north across the western part of the country before losing strength and moving on to Cuba and Haiti.
It left more than 60 dead in the region, including more than 30 in Jamaica. Marsha Coore Lobban, the high commissioner of Jamaica to Canada, said more bodies are expected to be found.
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“Between 400,000, 500,000 people have been displaced or impacted by (the hurricane), and that number could increase,” she told Global News.
She said that although authorities have made gains in opening some major roads and restoring power in a number of affected areas, many communities marooned by debris and floodwaters still remain largely inaccessible.
Areas like south St. Elizabeth, considered the breadbasket of the island, ravaged by Hurricane Beryl last year are once again devastated.
“The farmlands were soaked because prior to Melissa, we were having rains continuously for several days, so the soil was already saturated,” Coore Lobban noted.
“The crops have all been damaged. In terms of livestock, countless animals have died and the farms destroyed, so you’re looking at devastation.”
All of this has the Jamaican diaspora in Montreal worried.
“There are people who are still sleeping on wet mattresses, they’re still in wet clothes, they’re still having to walk through inches of water,” Spence said.
For Geddes, being away from their loved ones makes them feel helpless and the mental toll on them and others has been heavy.
“It does hurt to see people that you know, people that you love, family members, being affected by this,” she said.
Spence said she’s had many sleepless nights, but that collecting funds and relief supplies — 12 barrels’ worth so far — is not only therapeutic, but it’s also part of the work that has to be done. They’re planning a fundraising event Friday at 662 90th Ave. in LaSalle.
The Jamaica Association of Montreal (JAM) is also co-ordinating the collection of supplies and donations, and is planning a fundraising event Saturday at the association’s reception hall at 4065 Jean Talon W. They can be reached at 514 737 8299 ext. 110.
Anyone wishing to donate or to find out how to help can contact JAM or the high commission in Ottawa at 343 961 5200.
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