“No Other Organisation Has the Collective Reach”: A Kingston Priest’s Relief Mission Fills a St Elizabeth Church Hall

• Anglican priests from Kingston took a relief mission to St Peter’s Church Hall in Pedro Plains
• Lines grew longer than the full church hall as word spread, and most people were not church members
• Supplies included food, water, toiletries and tarpaulins
• Roof and housing restoration will take time, the priest wrote

When a group of volunteers from Kingston drove to St Elizabeth in July 2024, after Hurricane Beryl had battered the parish, they set up in St Peter’s Church Hall in Pedro Plains. Anglican priest Sean Major-Campbell described the trip in his Sunday Gleaner column on July 21, crediting Fr Louis Hurst, Fr Kirk Brown and Fr Bertram Gayle, among other volunteers and donors.

The list of what they carried reads like a household’s entire pantry: rice, beans, cornmeal, crackers, bun, bread, cooking oil, tinned fish and corned beef, milk, toiletries, diapers and adult pull-ups, sanitary napkins, bleach, detergent, cases of water and juice, and tarpaulins. The hall was already full when they arrived, and the lines grew longer as word spread that a group from Kingston had come to share. One bus driver told him the supplies seemed to multiply as they were unloaded: “But faada, when mi a tek owt di tings dem, it look laik dem muor dan wen wi did a pak.”

Major-Campbell noted that most of the people served were not members of the church, and that the volunteers had no interest in where people came from or which party they supported. “Understandably, it will take time to figure out how people are assisted re roof and housing restoration activities,” he wrote. “However, in the meantime, they still have the daily need for food and water and sanitation and toiletries.” He added: “No other organisation in Jamaica, has the collective reach that the church has.”

He urged continued outreach through the recovery, warning that family strains, health problems and poverty can deepen after a disaster, and that depression and post-traumatic stress are easily overlooked. He asked readers to remember animals and the volunteers themselves. The group had planned to feed its own team on the road home, but found enough food left over to share.

The column captures two truths about disaster recovery that matter to anyone who owns or rents a home in hurricane country. First, church halls are part of the country’s emergency infrastructure: a sturdy hall in a rural district becomes a warehouse, a meeting point and a distribution centre within days. Second, the tarpaulin is a stopgap, not a solution. As Major-Campbell acknowledged, roofs and houses take far longer to put right than a food line, which is why storm-ready roofing, proper fastenings and adequate insurance are worth attention long before the next season begins.

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