As airports begin to reopen in hurricane ravaged Jamaica today, a Lowcountry non-profit plans to send more people and supplies to help survivors get what they will desperately need in the coming days and months, clean water.
Right now, Water Mission of North Charleston says it has four people on the ground, assessing the damage after a massive, category five hurricane, Melissa, slammed the island nation Wednesday.
“We’re talking to them nonstop throughout the day,” said Water Mission Senior Director for Disaster Response Brock Kreitzburg.
“It’s just complete destruction in the path of the hurricane,” he said. So many roads have been cut off by landslides.”
Kreitzburg says his team is trying to reach remote areas by car but will likely have to do so by helicopter. They’re on the island to set up portable systems that can generate as much as 10,000 gallons of clean water a day.
“It’s a system that you can take dirty water that looks like it's brown and you wouldn’t want to drink it and the output is safe,” he said.
Kreitzburg says those water cleansing systems are now being flown to Jamaica and more members of his team should be on the ground tomorrow. But, he says, those already on the island are likening the storm’s destruction to Hurricane Dorian which killed 74 people in the Bahamas in 2019.
“Their whole lives have been turned upside down and they have so much to worry about,” said Kreitzburg.
“Our goal is to come in and meet that critical need of providing safe water.”
So far, more than 30 people have been killed by Hurricane Melissa which swept Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti. Thousands have been left without shelter and power, and many are missing. Now the killer storm looks to be headed to Bermuda.
