Members of New York City’s Caribbean communities are scrambling to collect vital supplies for survivors of Hurricane Beryl, which has left a path of devastation in several island nations.
“Right now, everyone's still in disbelief of what happened,” Simone Sewell, a Brooklyn resident whose grandmother lives in Grenada, told Gothamist on Friday. “You know how we wake up this morning and we have something? They have nothing.”
Elected officials and community leaders are asking New Yorkers for a variety of relief supplies to be brought to drop-off locations across Brooklyn, including non-perishable food, essential medicine and first aid, flashlights and batteries, toiletries and hygiene kits, as well as clothing, pillows and sleeping bags.
“I urge Brooklynites to rally together and offer support for the victims, and I also encourage you to be comforting neighbors for our borough’s outsized Caribbean community, many of whom have loved ones abroad affected by the hurricane,” said Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, in a statement.
Beryl wrought havoc in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados this week after becoming the earliest storm on record to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. It has since been downgraded to a tropical storm as it barrels toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, but is expected to gain strength. CNN reported it has killed at least nine people.
Hermelyn’s family is from Haiti. A statement circulated by her office said relief efforts would benefit residents of “Union Island, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, West Indies, Carriacou, Bequia, Grenada, Petite Martinique's and Jamaica.”
There are nearly 195,000 Jamaican New Yorkers, as well as 13,000 Grenadians and 7,000 Vincentians, according to census data.
The drop-off locations include SUNY Downstate Medical Center at 450 Clarkson Ave. and Christ Ambassador Ministries at 5007 Beverly Rd., in Brooklyn.
The office of City Councilmember Farah Lewis at 1434 Flatbush Ave. is also serving as a drop-off location. An aide to Lewis said on Friday that the office is receiving plenty of non-perishable food but could use more clothing, blankets, cots, sleeping bags and tents for survivors.
Mohamed Q. Amin, the executive director of the Caribbean Equality Project, a Queens-based organization that serves LGBTQ+ members of the community, said his office was also taking donations and that “many of our community members who live in New York City actually support their families and their friends and neighbors” in their homelands and now felt added stress to come through for them.
“There's a lot of sadness, there's a lot of, I want to say fear of displacement, fear of stability, fear of housing insecurity that folks are experiencing at the moment,” said Amin.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is coordinating disaster response with local Red Cross societies. Its website has more information about those efforts and how to help.
