Hurricane Irma – Day 8 – September 13th
We divided our team into two as the focus for today and the coming days is the government distribution of drinking water and rations. We went to two locations to assist and worked on loading up the trucks in preparation for distribution. We dropped water off at shelters in a part of town that didn’t have any drinking water since the hurricane. Then we went to the Bush Road and St. Peters water distribution points where hundreds of people formed lines and we distributed 2 bottles of drinking water per person.
Laser 101 St. Maarten announced that all volunteers that wanted to assist with food and water distribution to come to the distribution points and meet K1 so our convoy of volunteers grew by about 10 by the end of the day.
After the 6 hours of distribution, we regrouped to discuss logistics on how to coordinate our growing team of volunteers as well as issues that we are currently facing with vehicles, gas, etc. After this, most of the volunteers went home as the curfew was back in effect and team leaders went to check on the food supplies and have meetings with different individuals who had offered to add food to our supplies.
In the evening we sat in on a meeting with various UN and other international organization representatives as well as government representatives where the issues of water and food distribution were discussed in depth and plans were made for tomorrow and the following days. We spoke personally to different aid organizations that we will be working with.
The K1 Britannia Foundation was acknowledged as being one of the main organizations up until this point keeping the vulnerable institutions, shelters, and emergency personnel fed. We got other requests in last night from more temporary shelters and vulnerable homes on the island that are in need of food and water so we will be resolving those issues tomorrow.