Responding to Hurricane Beryl in Grenada

It’s been just over a month since Hurricane Beryl, a powerful and destructive category 5 hurricane, swept through the Caribbean, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. When I arrived in tranquil Grenada late-last year, I certainly did not expect to be working on my fourth emergency since joining TBI in 2014, nor needing to mobilise my experience working on the West Africa Ebola emergency or Africa’s Covid-19 response!

Beryl totally devastated communities and livelihoods in parts of Grenada and across the region. 95% infrastructure destruction is estimated in the worst-affected areas of Grenada, and the Prime Minister Hon. Dickon Mitchell, reported a “total devastation” of the natural environment, including agriculture.

Thanks to our team’s placement, supporting at the heart of government, I’m proud to say that, once again, the Tony Blair Institute team was able to meet the government’s moment of need. We rode out the storm ourselves at home and, on the first day after the storm, were able to offer our services to the Prime Minster and dive into assisting with the urgent emergency response work.

We focused on helping the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) and Prime Minister to try and solve three challenges:

1. Coordinating the receipt and delivery of urgent relief supplies to the worst-affected areas: the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique
2. Communicating with international and local partners about needs and the government response
3. Ensuring timely flow of information for decision makers and the public.

We’re only a small team, so focused on injecting experience and insights from TBI’s previous disaster and emergency response work, putting systems in place that would expedite the effective deployment and coordination of resources. We also reached out to key decision makers with the information they needed when they needed it.

Our role led to important changes in the urgent first days post-hurricane. As the regional and international response scaled up by week two, we gradually handed much of this over to regional and UN system experts.

Critical to our response was TBI’s global network of partners. Carriacou and Petite Martinique’s 10,000 people were completely disconnected by the hurricane, with both the power grid and telecom towers knocked out. It took 2 days to reestablish any communication with the islands.

To get the islands reconnected, we worked with Starlink to deliver 10 kits to affected areas in collaboration with the Grenadian disaster response. These kits have been delivered to police stations, hurricane shelters, a radio station and local minister’s office. As a result, they have opened vital lines of communication between the islands, ensuring that the Government can coordinate resources and relief efforts effectively.

In addition, our partners at Planet and Microsoft’s AI for Good Initiative swiftly used Planet’s satellite technology to provide detailed before and after images of Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Microsoft’s AI technology was then applied to analyse these images to estimate the extent of infrastructure damage. These technologies provided a rapid assessment of the extent of damage which were able to inform impact assessments needed by government to unlock multilateral disaster relief funds. Additionally, the imagery has been valuable to the government’s infrastructure team in assessing land use for recovery and reconstruction efforts, including identifying suitable locations for temporary housing for affected families.

The road to recovery for Grenada is long but TBI remains committed to providing ongoing support to Prime Minister Mitchell and the Government of Grenada. Our focus is now on building long-term resilience to future disasters and continuing to support the delivery of the Prime Minister’s vision for Grenada’s long-term transformation.

I want to say a huge thank you to my team, our partners at Starlink, Planet and Microsoft’s AI for Good Initiative, and all the government leaders, officials and volunteers we worked with for their resilience, resolve and speed in aiding Grenada through this difficult time. I’m immensely proud to work with you all.