- Officials plead for $9 million in aid weeks after Hurricane Beryl devastates the southeast Caribbean
The United Nations has joined the plea to seek help for St. Vincent and Grenada in the wake of Hurricane Beryl’s devastation, noting that $5 million of the $9 million requested would go to Grenada and the remainder of $4 million would go to St. Vincent and the Grenadines in a bid to help a total of 43,000 people.
In an AP report, Simon Springett, U.N. resident coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, said Beryl “disrupted lives at a scale and ferocity that is becoming all too common.”
The storm, which killed at least seven people and destroyed schools, businesses, and livelihoods across Grenada, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, left thousands of people homeless, according to the report.
“Together, they constitute Beryl’s Armageddon,” said Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “They decimated entire islands in just a few hours.”
“There is nothing there, really. The housing, public facilities, the shoreline, the fisheries, the tourism infrastructure—they are basically no more,” he said during a news briefing as his voice broke.
Beryl set a record for the first-ever Category 4 storm in June in the Atlantic, making landfall on July 1 on Carriacou in Grenada and swiping nearby islands.
“There is no economy,” said Dickon Mitchell, prime minister of Grenada. “We will have to feed the population for the next six months.”
He noted that Beryl destroyed 90% of all buildings on several Grenadian islands, including hospitals and airports. “We need the funds now,” he said. “We deserve to stay alive.”
Beryl became the earliest storm to rapidly intensify, with wind speeds jumping by more than 63 mph in just 24 hours. It went from an unnamed depression to a Category 4 storm in 48 hours, with record warm Atlantic waters contributing significantly to its intensification.
