IRA MATH­UR

Beryl, a cat­e­go­ry five hur­ri­cane, struck the south­east­ern Caribbean on Ju­ly 1 this year, caus­ing wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion across mul­ti­ple is­lands. With sus­tained winds of 150 mph, Beryl land­ed on Car­ri­a­cou, part of Grena­da, and wreaked hav­oc on Pe­tite Mar­tinique and Union Is­land.

The storm oblit­er­at­ed homes and in­fra­struc­ture, leav­ing Car­ri­a­cou vir­tu­al­ly flat­tened and de­stroy­ing 90 per cent of the homes on Union Is­land. The to­tal death toll across the af­fect­ed re­gions stands at sev­en, with fa­tal­i­ties re­port­ed in Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela. The dam­age is par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere in Car­ri­a­cou, where near­ly all build­ings, in­clud­ing the pri­ma­ry health fa­cil­i­ty and air­port, suf­fered ex­ten­sive dam­age. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pow­er re­main down in many ar­eas, com­pli­cat­ing res­cue and re­lief ef­forts.

Dr Al­i­son Thomp­son, the founder of Third Wave Vol­un­teers, a Unit­ed States-based non-prof­it that re­sponds to dis­as­ters and crises around the world, mo­bilised re­lief ef­forts with so­lar lights to pre­vent vi­o­lence and en­sure safe­ty. She is ask­ing peo­ple to reach out and help dev­as­tat­ed fam­i­lies through re­lief or­gan­i­sa­tions such as hers.

“The is­lands ur­gent­ly need re­lief: homes are over­crowd­ed, and elec­tric­i­ty, food, and clean wa­ter are scarce. The risk of dis­ease is high, with COVID-19 spread­ing on Pe­tit Mar­tinique and mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness­es like­ly due to stand­ing wa­ter. Price goug­ing has tripled the cost of es­sen­tial build­ing ma­te­ri­als, and high trav­el costs be­tween is­lands hin­der re­lief ef­forts. Sin­gle moth­ers are par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed, of­ten break­ing down when of­fered sup­port, as they strug­gle to re­main strong for their chil­dren.

“The loss is pro­found, with res­i­dents fac­ing the de­struc­tion of homes that have been in their fam­i­lies for gen­er­a­tions. With no in­sur­ance or jobs, many live in tents, ex­posed to heat and mos­qui­toes. There is an ur­gent need for mo­bile clin­ics to reach re­mote ar­eas.” Over the years, Dr Al­i­son Thomp­son has be­come syn­ony­mous with re­lent­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts and un­wa­ver­ing com­pas­sion. Her life­long mis­sion as a glob­al vol­un­teer be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, when she raced to Ground Ze­ro on rollerblades, tend­ing to fire­fight­ers and search­ing for lost friends amidst the chaos. This har­row­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­came her call­ing, and her mot­to, “Every­one’s need­ed,” has since guid­ed her ex­ten­sive hu­man­i­tar­i­an work.

For over two decades, Dr Thomp­son has been at the fore­front of nu­mer­ous glob­al crises, from the Syr­i­an refugee cri­sis to the dev­as­ta­tion of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters like the 2004 Asian tsuna­mi and the 2010 Haiti earth­quake. Her ef­forts are doc­u­ment­ed in her award-win­ning film, The Third Wave, and her book, The Third Wave: A Vol­un­teer Sto­ry, which chron­i­cles her ex­pe­ri­ences in Sri Lan­ka fol­low­ing the tsuna­mi.

In Haiti, she co-man­aged a 75,000-per­son IDP camp and field hos­pi­tal with ac­tor Sean Penn and has worked along­side the US Army and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the CDC and the Unit­ed Na­tions. Her ef­forts have earned her ac­co­lades such as the ‘Or­der of Aus­tralia’, the Paul Har­ris Award, and Pres­i­dent Biden’s Pres­i­den­tial Life­time Achieve­ment Award.

Dr Thomp­son’s or­gan­i­sa­tion has grown in­to a net­work of over 30,000 vol­un­teers. They di­rect­ly aid dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties and refugees, fo­cus­ing on dis­as­ter re­sponse, med­ical aid, clean wa­ter, and so­lar light­ing. In 2023, she led med­ical mis­sions to as­sist the Wayuu Tribes in Colom­bia and co­or­di­nat­ed re­lief ef­forts fol­low­ing the Maui bush­fire dis­as­ter. Her hu­man­i­tar­i­an spir­it was al­so ev­i­dent dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, where she and her team de­liv­ered over two mil­lion N95 masks across the Unit­ed States and be­yond.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, her work in­cludes spear­head­ing large vol­un­teer cam­paigns in the af­ter­math of hur­ri­canes and oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, con­sis­tent­ly bring­ing re­lief and hope to dev­as­tat­ed com­mu­ni­ties. Dr Thomp­son’s phi­los­o­phy is root­ed in the be­lief that every­one has a role in cre­at­ing a bet­ter world. Her work on the shores of Lesvos, Greece, where she met and em­braced refugees, em­bod­ies this be­lief.

“On the shores of Lesvos, a refugee and a vol­un­teer meet—two hu­mans em­brace. No dis­crim­i­na­tion, no walls—one race. Some­times, a hug would last five min­utes, and oth­er hugs would on­ly last 30 sec­onds, but those mo­ments were the purest form of un­con­di­tion­al love I have ever known.”

In 2004, Dr Thomp­son, a New York City film­mak­er, was en­joy­ing Christ­mas when a 9.3 mag­ni­tude earth­quake off In­done­sia trig­gered a dev­as­tat­ing tsuna­mi. Watch­ing the death toll rise, she felt com­pelled to help. With $300, ba­sic med­ical sup­plies, and her Ground Ze­ro vol­un­teer ex­pe­ri­ence, she head­ed to Sri Lan­ka. In a rav­aged coastal town, she and a small team pro­vid­ed med­ical care, food, and wa­ter, col­lect­ed bod­ies, and re­built homes and schools. Her in­tend­ed two-week stay turned in­to 14 months, dur­ing which they es­tab­lished new busi­ness­es and set up Sri Lan­ka’s first tsuna­mi ear­ly-warn­ing cen­tre, sav­ing count­less lives.

Dr Thomp­son’s book The Third Wave: A Vol­un­teer Sto­ry (Spiegel & Grau 2011) tells the sto­ry of how she en­tered the world of vol­un­teerism.

Ex­cerpt

“I felt the ground mov­ing be­neath me and looked up to see the World Trade Cen­ter’s near­by north tow­er tum­bling to­wards me like a stack of cards. I sprint­ed away, fran­ti­cal­ly at­tempt­ing to out-skate the avalanche that was try­ing to eat me alive but then gave up and dove un­der a parked UPS truck. Twen­ty buck­et-loads of prayers lat­er, I crawled out in­to the now even denser fog of sooty dark­ness. I saw pieces of bod­ies scat­tered about like road kill and col­lect­ed them in­to a pile. I count­ed five legs, three arms, two tor­sos, and half a head.

***

An hour lat­er, po­lice­men start­ed scream­ing for every­one to move away from the World Trade Cen­ter area. Re­luc­tant­ly, I obeyed their com­mands, but I knew I wasn’t done yet. It be­came too dif­fi­cult nav­i­gat­ing on skates, but in my mad rush to get to the dis­as­ter area as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, I had for­got­ten to pack shoes. So I left my rollerblades be­side the Stuyvesant School wall just off the West Side High­way and quick­ly walked in my socks to a near­by pet store.

In a Schwarzeneg­ger-movie mo­ment, I an­nounced in my most as­sertive voice, “I am a nurse, and I have no shoes. I need to go in­to Ground Ze­ro to help, so I need your shoes now!” The stunned Asian man at the check­out counter baulked at first and then re­vealed his feet, which were open-toed flaps of plas­tic he wore. I took his busi­ness card, con­fis­cat­ed his flip-flops, and told him I’d be back.”

–End of ex­cerpt

Re­flect­ing on her ex­pe­ri­ence, Dr Thomp­son re­calls, “While I was wash­ing out fire­men’s eyes, Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FE­MA) kept ask­ing us to leave and said it was time for the pro­fes­sion­als to take over. This went on for four days. On their last vis­it, they glanced around the bro­ken room, cov­ered their badges, and said, ‘Please stay—every­one’s need­ed.’ That be­came our mot­to.”

Dr Thomp­son is ap­peal­ing to every per­son who can and wants to help our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Caribbean. “There is so much help need­ed on Car­ri­a­cou. Please reach out with a do­na­tion. Third Wave vol­un­teers are cur­rent­ly fo­cus­ing on the sin­gle moth­ers and their fam­i­lies on the is­land.”

BOX

To do­nate

To do­nate, email al­isont@third­wavevol­un­teers.com

The web­site to do­nate is https://third­wavevol­un­teers.com

The Hur­ri­cane Beryl fundrais­er: https://an­gelinkweb.page.link/fzNuWx­fY­cyN1mQJL6

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site:www.iras­room.org

Au­thor in­quiries can be sent to iras­room@gmail.com