It’s been days since a historic Category 5 Hurricane Beryl slammed the southeast Caribbean, but residents and groups in the Toronto area and beyond are ramping up efforts to help those in need.
Partnering with Studio M on Eglinton Avenue West near Oakwood Avenue, Reclaim Rebuild Eg West and Black Urbanism TO organized a Grenada hurricane relief event on Friday.
Between 6 and 10 p.m., residents are asked to bring financial donations, water, non-perishable food, first aid supplies, clothing, blankets and other necessities.
“It’s not looking too good in particularly Carriacou, Petite Martinique, Grenada, and St. Vincent (and the Grenadines),” co-organizer Marcus Pereira told CityNews on Friday.
Pereira said he has family in Grenada and is still waiting to hear from them as crews in the country continue to work on restoring utilities.
“It’s worrisome to not get in contact with them, but we stay hopeful that everything’s all right over there right now,” he said.
When it comes to Friday’s event, Pereira said he and others with connections to the region felt a need to step up.
“We figured it would be good to use our connections and our platform and our privilege that we have over here to help the people that are in need overseas,” he said.
Volunteers will be sorting through the items after the drive and putting the collected items into barrels for shipping. Pereira said they expect the items to be in Grenada within one to two weeks.
In Etobicoke, staff and volunteers with GlobalMedic have been working this week to get aid to the Caribbean.
During a tour of the charity’s headquarters, rapid response team members were in the middle of assembling hundreds of family emergency kits. The kits include water purification units to ensure access to drinking water, personal hygiene items, solar lights and food.
A spokesperson said they were working with Air Canada to begin flying the kits south and deliveries were expected to begin as soon as Friday.
In Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Red Cross volunteers and workers have been deployed to help with recovery efforts.
The Red Cross in Canada is collecting donations to funnel into the Caribbean.
“We can transfer the money directly to our local teams and they’re able to use that to distribute relief items (and) purchase what they need in the local markets,” Canadian Red Cross spokesperson Chiran Livera said.
“We also want to encourage local procurement as much as possible because that helps (keep) the economy going, especially after a major disaster like this.”
Pereira said any level of support helps since the Caribbean is vulnerable.
“These islands in the Caribbean and other places are the least contributors to the climate crisis, and they’re the ones that end up getting impacted the most,” he said.
“We have the privilege to help support them when they need it at their most.”
Hurricane Beryl has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it arrived in Mexico, but forecasters said it could be classified a hurricane again as it moves west and north. The storm made history because it was the earliest in the Atlantic season when a Category 5 hurricane developed.