A look at the Hurricane through another's eyes

http://hurricane-soforthilfe-st-lucia.blog.de

Take a look at Sven Homscheid's blog about the aftermath of hurricane Tomas on St Lucia. He works for GTZ on renewable energy projects in the eastern Caribbean. The kids did get back to school last week across the island. There are still many areas with out water, however.

This week, our amazing volunteer, Jonathan Vickery, is back at Mr Elie's farm in Mabouya Valley working on a redesign for the biodigester cover. Mr Elie's farm was spared much damage from the hurricane. We have another digester design we also will try, thanks to Sven!

St Lucia after the Hurricane

Dear Friends,

For the last 10 days, I was in hurricane ravaged St Lucia and have an update for everyone. On Friday, October 29^th, St. Lucians were told that Tropical Storm Tomas was headed their way from Barbados. Since it only stayed 3 hours over Barbados, most people continued in their final preparations for the Creole Festival, set to occur the 30^th and 31^st of October. The Festival never happened. Not only did Tomas intensify to a Category 2 hurricane, it stayed over St Lucia from Saturday morning until Sunday morning, dropping as much as 60 cm (nearly 2 feet!!) of rain in that 22 hour period. After the storm finally passed, the damage was everywhere: flooding washed out bridges and filled homes with mud and debris; the electricity and water were out EVERYWHERE; roads disintegrated or were covered by landslides; people lost their homes and even their lives in the landslides. It seriously hurt Fond St. Jacques where many people died as their homes were washed away by mudslides as well as the Livity Art Studio where 5 people died in a landslide and the area is now completely unrecognizable. It used to be rainforest. Now all you can see is mud and rock. One lane of the main road was recreated through the mud, only to slide down again when a tropical wave deluged us last Thursday. The southern part of the island was hit the worst, from Bexon where the Cul de Sac river is so full of mud and debris that the river is actually perched above the level of the village and the people continue to get flooded every time it rains to Micoud where one bridge is completely gone and two others are unstable but are still being used! The capital city and tourist areas in the north were mostly spared. While the electricity service was restored with impressive speed, most people on island are still living without clean water over 3 weeks after the hurricane. Can you imagine having to go to a river to collect water, to bathe, to wash clothes while knowing that the river or spring water is contaminated with sewage?

With the help of the German Embassy and the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute, I took 30 cases of PUR emergency water purification packets to the island. The anger and despair of people who do not have clean water was palpable. Global Medic from Canada also brought PUR and portable water treatment pumps. The water company reconnected the town of Soufriere to piped water, but people immediately started getting diarrhea from drinking the water. Caribbean SEA is not an emergency relief organization, but we so happy we were able to help. We typically work on long term solutions. The young adult leaders of our 5 student groups on island are now banding together to work on drinking water issues as well and we need to support them.

Can you help us this year? Any donations are so very welcome to help us pay for emergency water treatment as well as helping the students devise and implement long term solutions for their communities. In the Mabouya Valley, my friends have reported getting worms or small fish coming out through their kitchen faucets. They deserve better. You can mail donations to our US office or donate through our website at www.caribbean-sea.org.

Thanks so much for your consideration, your advice, and your prayers. If you have any questions or need further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

All the best,

Mary Beth H Sutton

Executive Director

summer in the islands

Maria loves St Lucia, especially the Maria Islands!

Dominica, St Lucia, Curacao....the common thread is the Caribbean Sea and this critical time for the survival of the coral reefs and most of the life in the sea. If climate change doesn't make you feel the need to do something, go look at the reefs that have been covered with sediment eroded from the land or that have been killed by nutrient loading from sewage. Everyone can make a difference....and Maria is definitely doing her part!

Mero Village, Dominica

Dr. Les Behrends, our technical director, and I got back from Dominica two weeks ago.....the wastewater garden was nearly complete by the time we left. We are honorary citizens of the village of Mero now..everyone was so wonderful and most have so little to live on. One guy told Les that "He believed in hard work, he didn't believe in tired, he believed in hungry." That says it all. We will be back in Mero this summer for the grand opening of the public toilet and the clean water camp for the youngsters of the village!

SALSA Contest winners announced!

We were delighted to have 5 restaurants and one individual, Tom Kale, enter our inaugural salsa contest. The restaurants made some awesome salsa and it was obvious that people are very partial to different salsa tastes. It nearly ended up a 6 way tie, but truly, we had a 3 way tie for first place with Mojo Burrito, Amigo's in Red Bank and Ayala's on Signal Mountain all receiving equal numbers of votes to establish our 3 winners! However, El Meson, La Altena, and Tom all had significant votes as well and it could have gone to anyone. I think we need to have a larger voting population next time! Thanks so much to all our entrants. You are all winners!!

Thanks for a GREAT Beach Party!!

It's not too easy pulling off an event after delaying it because of snow. It simply would not have been possible without the help of so many folks....esp Connie, Annette, and Angela! Without them, this party would not have happened! Then add Larry, John, Susan, Rebekah, Melissa, Lavonda, Emmy, Maria, Christine, Corinne, Nancy, Mary, and Tom.....who did amazing work and then Pam and Maureen were our auction ladies and Matthew helped set up. So many volunteers helped and so many folks were very generous in their donations and the Tennessee Aquarium, Leisure Time Dive, Pruetts on Signal Mountain, Contemporary Portraits, and Athens Distributing all sponsored our event. Nice. So thanks, one and all! You did it for the kids and the water, both in the Caribbean and home in the Tennessee Valley.

P. S. Watch for event pictures from the Forehands!

Postponing the Beach Party was difficult....

But we now know it was the right thing to do. In Tennessee, 5 inches of snow followed by .3 inch of ice just shuts everything down! Our electricity didn't return until Sunday night. I can't thank our organizing committee enough....they are simply awesome! We have rescheduled the Beach Party for MARCH 5th....and it will be better than ever!