Lebanon
Along with three other American Red Cross volunteers, he hops into a box truck filled with enough goods to serve 400 families and rolls out into the island. Sometimes, the destination is only 10 minutes away. Other times, it’s an hourslong drive through mountains on roads that are still being cleared of debris.
But every time the team arrives in a town, people are waiting.
“It’s amazing, just the unofficial communication line. Suddenly people appear,” Sykes, a Democratic state representative and former Lebanon deputy fire chief, said on Monday night.
“People will line up by the hundreds and they’re just patient,” he said. “It could be blazing hot or pouring buckets and they just wait their turn and are extremely grateful.”
Sykes is one of several Upper Valley residents deployed in the Caribbean to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico nearly a month ago, killing 43 people and leaving the island’s infrastructure heavily damaged.
Sykes typically works until dark because electricity on the island is scarce. Phone service also is intermittent on the island, he said, adding that Monday marked the first time he had a Wi-Fi signal since deploying about two weeks ago.
As of Tuesday, power had been restored to 16 percent of the island, according to the territorial government. Fifty-three percent of the island’s telecommunications were functioning, but only 19 percent of cellphone antennas and 33 percent of its cell towers have been restored.
Clean drinking water is in short supply, Sykes said, as is food in some portions of the island. This past weekend, his team visited a mountain community that hadn’t seen any relief since the storm.
“The good news is that we had a nice mix of things like fresh fruit (and) water,” he said. “We had some infant formula, things like that.”
“It’s a challenge. We’re putting out as much as we can and the volunteers are working many, many hours,” said Sykes, an experienced Red Cross disaster volunteer who spent nearly two years in Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
However, things are getting better and there are “glimmers of progress,” Sykes said.
When he got to the island, all of the trees were brown because the bark and leaves had been torn off. But the rainy season is bringing back vegetation, and buds are renewing hopes for revitalization.
The island’s residents also are optimistic, Sykes said. When Red Cross teams arrive, people usually help offload the trucks and deliver goods to their neighbors, he said.
“They are certainly grateful and happy when we show up and give them what we can,” Sykes said. “They work hard right along with us.”
Lebanon Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos also is seeing progress on Puerto Rico every day.
He’s currently on loan to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, working 14- to 16-hour days at the government’s incident operations center in San Juan.
“There is a long way to go but I am confident that all of the people on the ground here will help,” Christopoulos said in an email on Monday. “It sure is humbling to me and the people here have been great and equally humble.”
Volunteers also are working hard on the recovery efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were left reeling from the storm.
Etna resident Cristina Hammond has been there since Sept. 28, working with the Red Cross to coordinate its response with the government and other nonprofit organizations.
“It’s a pretty challenging environment, but people have lots of hope and we’re working really hard to see what we can to do help,” she said by phone from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., while on her way to Washington to see her husband, Marion Cross Principal Bill Hammond, be named National Distinguished Principal for 2017-18.
Hammond, who was with Sykes in after the Haiti earthquake, has been deployed to both Texas and Florida this year. And after a few days’ break, she’ll return to the Virgin Islands for potentially six more weeks.
The biggest challenge volunteers are facing is a lack of communication on the islands, she said. Electricity is running in less than 20 percent of the territory and some islands have no cellphone communication.
“Every single streetlight and traffic signal and almost every single telephone pole is still down across St. Thomas and St. John,” Hammond said.
The islands also are subject to a curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., she said, meaning what electricity there is often shuts off around 5 p.m. Hammond then goes to live among roughly 500 other responders sharing a U.S. construction boat and the Vietnam-era troop ship docked on the water.
“There’s lot of challenges, but we’re making some headway,” she said, adding that international Red Cross teams also are helping the efforts. Spanish, Finnish, Danish and Mexican teams are in the Virgin Islands, Hammond said, while Honduran, Panamanian, Costa Rican and Colombian teams are in Puerto Rico.
“I think what is the most amazing, to me, is how people come together after a disaster and help each other and help in the community,” she said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com.