on wednesday, november 3rd, i got an email from my sister than she received a phone call from a family friend that our mother was “ok” after a hurricane tomas hit saint lucia where she lives. we were both taken by surprise since neither of us even knew there was hurricane in the region! the caller didn’t leave a lot of information but it was obviously great to hear she was alright.

soon after i saw some images of the aftermath in st. lucia and learned that soufrière quarter was particularly hard hit and basically impossible to reach except by boat. a comment in this usa today article from a huffington post freelancer covering the devastation in soufrière caught my eye:

“This tragedy has not been given nearly enough attention as it needs. The Lucians are desperately in need of water, food, and hope.”

uff-da. so she was “ok” when the phone call was made but it was certainly hard to not wonder how she was doing in terms of access to food, clean water, shelter since the view from her front yard looks out over the ocean ( she took the image above recently ) and the general situation seemed dire indeed.

after a few more days without hearing any word i noticed in an follow-up article from the huffington post freelancer ( twitter: @amberdegrace ) a link to the twitter account of a man named terry finisterre ( twitter: @terryfinisterre ) who was providing a firsthand account on the ground in soufrière.

it seemed like a longshot, but i thought sent terry a “tweet” asking if he knew my mom and let him know i was concerned about her access to food, clean water, shelter etc.. he responded quickly that landlines were coming up in that area and i should try to call her. i responded that she didn’t have a landline, just had a cell phone. amazingly he responded with, “In fact, I will try to have someone check for you tomorrow, she works in the area.” ( soon after that message, he seems to have found someone who knows her personally and writes, “Actually, the person says she knows your mom. No power in the area at present, we dropped off flashlights this week, though.” )

wow, he knows she works in the area and he’s going to send out a search party!

think about that for a moment – within the span of an hour i found someone on twitter who was on the ground in soufrière who knew folks who knew my mother and was willing to send someone to looking for her even though he probably had lots of other concerns. if you ever needed a example of the the power of technology mixed with The Inherent Goodness of Humanity, you need look no further.

i awoke the next morning to find this update from terry”

“@snowdeal Your mother is just dandy, she lives near the retirement home. It’s raining a bit and she has a couple of visitors.”

amazing! a moment later i checked my email and found an email from my sister. my mom called her wondering what was going on because folks from the island were coming looking for her! she is fine. she has shelter, plenty of food and water. she said the rest of the island had not been so fortunate and the conditions are really, really bad there – unlike anything she has ever seen. she said the mountain side near her home collapsed and a good friend of hers was killed in the collapse.

so sad. turns out the damage from tomas damage was 5X higher than originally assessed and almost 1/5th of st lucia GDP. please consider donating to the saint lucia disaster relief fund.