On September 4th, Kenisha and her mother boarded a plane in Florida to return to St. John, just 48 hours before Hurricane Irma made landfall. “We knew it was coming, but we had no idea how bad it was…No idea it was a CAT 5.” Kenisha had flown to the states to accompany her mother while she had surgery, spending weeks away from her small children who remained on island. They had to get back because the kids were there.

Upon returning to St. John, Kenisha placed her children at their grandmother’s home, which she felt was more structurally sound than her residence in Bellevue Estates. She, her mother and brother then stayed in their Bellevue home as Irma’s heavy winds and rains peeled pieces of it apart around them and flooded the inside for hours on end.

The next morning, Kenisha made the long trek to check on her kids - they were safe and sound. “I was very thankful. I said a prayer and I hugged my children. Ok, they’re safe. Now let’s go make sure everyone else is.” She remembers one very positive thing amidst the devastation of that day; “There were no roads to drive so you had to walk. Everyone was so kind and informative.”

Like many on St. John, Kenisha’s neighbors and friends rationed what little food and water they had after Hurricane Maria halted the relief supply chains just 2 weeks later. “I’ve lost 15 pounds. We had to ration food with the neighborhood. If we hadn’t done that, we would have run out of food pretty quickly.”

Now, almost 9 months since Irma, the hardships persist for Kenisha and her family. The severe water damage done to her home left extremely dangerous levels of mold present throughout the entire home, which she was not able to fully remediate for over 8 months. Almost all of her belongings needed to be discarded. Before the storms she was able to manage her family and her finances, and was even getting ahead. Now, she feels as though her family and her community are just treading water.

“You have to start replacing things…You’re working this job just to get ready for hurricane season, not to better yourself. It’s gonna be hard for any of us to get ahead. We can’t do that this time around.”

For Kenisha, her kids always come first. They eat first. Their needs come first. Their safety comes first. Before the storms, they enjoyed spending time in the kitchen with each of the kids assigned to their own job. Her daughter loves to dance, and her sons love sports and science. Please help us to fulfill Kenisha’s wish list at www.stjangels.ngo/be-an-angel and give hope to one of the many St John families who are still experiencing daily hardships.

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Since Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed 7 of the 11 family homes on Lucia and Debra’s family plot on Bordeaux, the ladies and their families have been displaced. Debra has been staying at a family home on St. John and they have built her a small apartment in the back of the house which is almost completed. Last week, we asked you to please help fulfill her wish list of items that she lost when her home was destroyed by one of Hurricane Irma’s many devastating cyclones. Debra STILL needs your help with purchasing items to create for her a sense of normalcy.

Lucia, on the other hand, found accommodations with family on St. Thomas and has been desperately trying to make her way back home to STJ. Unfortunately, our current housing crisis has made it next to impossible for anyone to find a rental, and Lucia, like many others, was in a home with no mortgage prior to these events. In the wake of such a tremendous loss, paying thousands of dollars for rent is out of the question for her.

Faced with not other option, Lucia began constructing a wooden platform where her house once stood and purchased herself a tent to move into.

Initially she was having trouble sourcing plywood to complete the platform and had no temporary power source--Items that can't be fulfilled from an online wish list. Fortunately, we have help here on island, too. Our partners at Love City Strong and the Freshwater Church were able to source these items thanks to some generous donors, and got Lucia back on her property in just one day.

Now, she needs YOUR help getting the items necessary for moving into an outdoor/camping setup. Even though this is not an ideal situation for anyone to live in, she misses being near her family and we are dedicated to helping her do this comfortably.

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Lucia was in her home at 2:30pm on September 6, watching the winds twirl all around her home on Bordeaux Mountain where her family owned 11 homes on a large plot of land. The door began bowing and a telephone pole bounced off the top of the house. “A little voice said, ‘look up,’” and the roof began to peel away from the house. At 8pm, she grabbed a small bag she had packed before the storm and ran out of her now unsafe home to attempt a journey through walls of wind and water to her sister Debra’s concrete home. She made it as far as her F-150 pickup truck. She situated the truck in between two other cars and began hitting the brake lights to alert Debra, Debra’s sons, daughters and grandchildren to the fact that she was safely in the truck outside. Debra and her family saw her sister’s alert as the large window in the front of their home “popped out of the concrete.” Realizing the upper part of the home was no longer safe, Debra and her son made their way outside to reach the lower level of the home. She looked up to see a tornado approaching and felt her feet leave the ground. Her son wrapped her arms around the water tank and grabbed her waist as she felt her feet leave the ground. “Ma, hold tight, I got you,” he said, as her granddaughter stood by screaming, thinking her grandmother was being taken away by Irma’s intense cyclones. Finally, in the downstairs of the home, they waited as more tornadoes passed, bringing more walls of water and filling up the small space with water up to their shins. At 11:30 pm, they made their way towards the brake lights, the women entering the truck to join Lucia, the men attempting safety in the neighboring Sidekick. They were all drenched and grateful for the heater in the large truck. Lucia said a little prayer as they waited out the rest of the devastating storm. She just kept saying “Lord keep us safe til the storm pass by…And he did it- that’s the grace of God. It could have taken the truck.” When the first light of dawn approached, they realized that of their family’s 11 homes on the land, only three had even partially survived. Lucia’s home was COMPLETELY gone. She saw her son’s home opened up like a book and split into four pieces. Debra’s son’s home folded in on itself. Debra’s roof landed on the hill between Bordeaux and Lameshur. Her outdoor freezer was in the house, her nephew’s documents had blown into her home from his, her sister’s dishes were in her kitchen. Everything was gone, but a pot of chicken soup remained on the stove… This is part one of two of Lucia and Debra’s story. Please click through on the link to help Debra fill her new apartment with the necessary items to create a sense of “new normal.” And stay tuned next Tuesday to hear the rest of these incredible women’s story of recovery in the aftermath of Irma and Maria.

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Evelyn was a Caneel Bay Resorts employee for 35 years. She was in the union and received health benefits, paid vacation time and the luxury of having a job that would provide for her and her three sons whom she raised as a single parent. She and one of her grown sons spent Irma in the bathtub after realizing the rest of the house was falling apart in the 200 plus MPH winds and tornadoes.
As the winds died down, Evelyn heard the neighbors calling her name. When she made her way out of the bathroom, the rest of the house was gone. “Living room and kitchen, gone. Bedroom, gone.” She looked at the sky and said, “He giveth, and he taketh away.”
Since Irma, I have been speaking with this remarkable lady quite regularly. She worked in the relief efforts with Global DIRT in the immediate wake of the disaster and volunteered at the Catholic Church when she had time. “I go out to volunteer so I don’t have to sit in the house and think,” she told me.
In recent months, Evelyn has been fortunate enough to receive aid from Love for Love City, Chesney’s organization. They are rebuilding her home and it is near completion! Success story! However, she lost the majority of her belongings between the winds of Irma and the rain of Maria. She doesn’t have the necessary means to re-fill her house with the items that make it feel like a home.
I looked at her during this conversation and said, “You never complain, I’ve never heard you once complain.” She looked at me and said with a smile, “(Life)It’s too short. I have life.”
Please help to re-stock Evelyn’s home with everything she needs to be comfortable and functional again at www.stjangels.ngo/beanangel! This story is proof that it takes the help of many organizations and a lot of positivity to create a new happy ending!

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This was once the home of a lovely young woman named Marcella. These are her belongings, still bagged and binned eight months after the storms at the property upon which she used to live. Marcella has been homeless since Irma flattened the cabin she was renting near what used to be Shipwreck Landing, scattering her belongings around for acres. She lived in a tent near Miss Lucy’s for five months following Irmaria and felt she was “a woman in the middle of nothingness....” She is now bouncing around between the homes of friends and the makeshift shelter at the church. She has a cat, that has been relocated to the ACC and a dog, Sampson, who is also being shuffled around between the homes of friends, sometimes on a daily basis. Marcella, at this point, doesn’t need things, aside from the few items in this wish list that will make her very transient state a bit more comfortable. What she needs is a home, at least for more than a few days at a time. She craves a bit of normalcy...stability She wants to know where her next shower is going to be. She doesn’t want to have to take her life with her every time she packs a bag to leave whatever house she is staying in at the beginning of each day. She wants to know her pets are safely together under one roof. Marcella lost her job in the midst of all of this as well. With Irma, she went from semi-established and generally comfortable to homeless and jobless with displaced pets. More than fulfilling this attached wish list, we are asking for specified donations dedicated to getting Marcella and her furry friends into a rental…even if only for a month. If you are willing to give, or you know of an apartment or room that is available, please reach out to us at donate@stjangels.ngo.

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When Irma made landfall on St. John on September 6, Loreli thought it was going to be a CAT 1 or 2. As she and her six children settled into the living room in their apartment that they have lived in since 2014, she assumed they would play some games and wait out the storm. Then the windows started to bow with the wind and she ran with the children into the next room where the roof collapsed as they entered. They spent the next four hours huddled in a closet. Now, seven months later, they are still without a roof or windows, they have had pest problems, ruining more of what little was salvaged from Irma’s winds or Maria’s rains. They are in a unique situation as the management of their complex will not allow external contractors to make repairs and have not arrived to do the work themselves. Among the items they lost was a laptop computer the whole family shared which her son, Daniel, now nine-years-old, won in the Governor’s Reading Challenge when he was five. Her two girls, Gabriela, 5, and Princess, 7, lost their educational tablets. They lost most of their clothing, sheets and all of the kitchen. While Loreli and I laughed together during our interview, I received a phone call from another STJ Angel who is cleaning out a house next week and will be able to fill Loreli’s kitchen again. The universe surely works in mysterious (and wonderful) ways. Please help us create a more comfortable existence for Loreli, Nandi, Daniel, Princess, Gabriela, Rayshawn and Joelle. Follow the link to create a happier ending!

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Meet Xalique! He is 17 years-old and a Junior at Ivanna Eudora Keen High School on St. Thomas. He and his three brothers and mother lost the roof on their home to #Irma and the roof is STILL leaking. Earlyn, his mother, came into our office last week to tell a story about her son…He was diagnosed with Autism at the age of four and, because their home is missing railings around the deck, it is unsafe for him to play outside and he is forced indoors all day. He LOVES to draw and sketches out full @nickelodeon episodes and is a collector of pencils but runs out of paper on the regular. He loves “pizza so much he might as well be a Ninja Turtle,” she giggled to me. Click through on the link to help Earlyn get Xalique some new drawing paper, clothing that fits him and some new bedding!!! www.stjangels.ngo/amazon-angels #beanangel #stjangels #amazonangels #bethechange #gratitude #thelittlethings #angelsinaction #commUNITY #family

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