Updated October 29, 2012, 2:00 pm
As the Eastern Seaboard of the United States braced for Hurricane Sandy, Catholic Relief Services and our partners in the Caribbean began helping people deal with the destruction it left in its wake.
Sandy struck Eastern Cuba on Thursday after passing through Jamaica and Haiti. Flooding and landslides downed trees and power lines, destroyed homes, and washed out crops throughout the Eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Holguín, where a major river overflowed. The hardest hit was Santiago de Cuba, where at least 9 people were killed and tens of thousands of people were forced to find shelter with families and friends. According to official government reports, there wasn’t a single block in Santiago de Cuba, the second most populous province in the country, which did not have some damage. All told, an estimated 100,000 homes were damaged—20,000 of them destroyed—as roadways were blocked, telephone services disrupted and important crops lost. Meanwhile, estimates are that 90 percent of churches and chapels were damaged, including the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Charity, the basilica near Santiago de Cuba named for the patroness of Cuba.
CRS partner, Cáritas Cuba, continues to work with staff in those hard hit areas to determine where the greatest need is – staff in Guantanamo still has not been able to access the most rural and mountainous areas – and to purchase and distribute the most critical supplies, which include food, drinking water, and house repair materials such as zinc sheets for roofs.
The rains also trigged flooding in Haiti, particularly in the Southern peninsula departments of South, Grand Anse and Nippes, sparing, for the most part, the capital Port-au-Prince, where some 370,000 people are still living in camps. Four people were killed while roughly 2,500 others were forced to leave their homes in the Southern peninsula. CRS is providing water for 600 families in Ile a Vache, a small island off the southwestern tip of the country, where some farms are now underwater according to news reports. In other areas throughout the Southern peninsula, CRS is working with the Haitian Church to supply 1,250 families with washing and cooking supplies. While the government has not declared a state of emergency, CRS is ready to respond where needed with prepositioned food stocks.
Jeff McIntosh, Deputy Country Representative for CRS’ Haiti, said the staff in Haiti is monitoring cholera cases in collaboration with partner hospitals and clinics throughout the country but that they are seeing no spikes in cases at his time.
In Jamaica, CRS’ emergency response team reports that winds, fallen trees and electrical posts have caused significant damages to houses in the communities where we work. “One thing that I would like to highlight is that the sense of community is very strong in all the areas we visited, neighbors helping neighbors and the Rangers also getting involved,” said project manager Jody-Ann Anderson. The St. Patrick’s Rangers, is a CRS-supported youth club of about 120 volunteers who are trained to respond to disasters. “In addition to our youth working in their communities to help with infrastructural repairs, they also checked on vulnerable members in their communities,” Anderson said.