A volunteer has told how humbled she is to have delivered emergency aid to hurricane-hit Jamaica.

Intrepid disaster relief worker Kirsten Edmonds Bailey helped managed teams of volunteers on an operation to help communities made homeless by one of the largest storms ever to hit the Caribbean.

She flew out on her 18-day humanitarian mission to Black River, a near-destroyed coastal town in December. She and her two teams were faced with huge devastation, food shortages, homeless people and potential public health threats from contaminated water.

Kirsten said: “I was expecting to see lots of destruction, but nothing could prepare me for the scale of devastation. This was a combination of the hurricane, one of the strongest recorded to hit the area, and the huge waves driven by the wind which raised the water level to above many buildings.

“Many older buildings, like churches, lay in ruins and nothing was untouched. In downtown Black River, newer shops made with steel had twisted girders laid bare. The large expensive coastal houses were just concrete skeletons.

“In the poorer countryside, the small-scale homes had their corrugated metal roofs blown off and scattered in the mangrove swamps. We helped locals retrieve their roofs from the fields. If you leave them too long they get trapped in the plants when they grow again. The area is usually green, but the mud and destroyed trees has made it grey and colourless.

“There were belongings, like clothes tangled in the wire fencing and the horrible smell of contaminated standing water which was a cholera and Weill’s Disease threat.”

Kirsten, a former Army officer, used her military leadership skills and readiness to adapt to a challenging situation to deploy as a team leader to the Caribbean with a volunteer rapid response charity called REACT.

REACT specialises in getting into crisis-hit areas as self-supported teams where others find it hard to access, to help the most vulnerable.

As a team leader she was responsible for tasking her team, liaising with the Jamaican Defence Force, other local and international aid organisations and the World Food Programme (WFP). REACT is an official partner of the WFP.

Kirsten, a veteran of the 2023 Moroccan quake aid, escaped her admin role in Jamaica, by helping with food and temporary shelter distribution: “I miss getting out in the field. But it helps me engage with other organisations, see what the teams were facing and monitor their physical and emotional welfare.”

She said first-world aid organisations could no longer go in as the all-knowing experts: “You have to be integrated into the international aid and local teams.

“I was very humbled by the locals’ fortitude when they’d lost their homes and everything.

“It was inspirational to see one woman in front of the ruins of her home with only one roofless room left. She was standing out in the open, determinedly getting on with domestic chores with the help of a small generator.”

Anyone interested in volunteering in a crisis can find out more from the REACT website: https://www.re-act.org.uk