Sergio Dantas, a member of the board of directors for Virgin Islands Search and Rescue and part of the Tortola crew, remembers how the group sprang to action after Irma — but in a slightly different capacity than normal. VISAR coordinated with other organisations to locate people who were unaccounted for and to deliver aid supplies.
At the moment I had my VISAR shirt on, walking around, and people were asking me, “What do I do now? I lost everything.” We told them, “Go home, clean your house, make it secure and then help your friends and neighbours to do something similar.”
I wasn’t bothered about the damage at my house: It was a little bit of a mess but I would get home so late and was so exhausted that week that I just went straight to bed.
Assessing
So the first thing I did was go to the base and check that the boats were okay and reported to [the Department of Disaster Management]. I could not get in touch with Virgin Gorda, but knew the Tortola VISAR boat was operational.
Officially we fall under DDM, and they tell us what to do. Our initial plan was to go to them, but while waiting for instructions we ran into the UK Royal Marines.
We told the Marines that we had two boats available and asked how we could help. From that first moment on, we started helping with the distribution of the relief that came from different NGOs and groups that were sending it here.
We started helping them take food, water and other things to other parts of the island and Jost Van Dyke, mainly, and Virgin Gorda, which was also getting help from the “Puerto Rican Navy” and other private donors. We also assisted the Marines to check Virgin Gorda — they wanted to know exactly where to go, and we took them to North Sound.
We also stopped at Cooper Island, because we knew people were staying there. They had all stayed inside the beach club and everyone was okay. To be honest, they probably had the best situation because the desalination plant was running and they had food from the restaurant.
Overall, we were helping the Marines, NGOs and we also had a few guys from different search-and-rescue teams from the United States.
Messages for help
People were contacting us on Facebook, our website and even on WhatsApp, saying: “I haven’t heard from my mother, my friend and other persons,” and we would go and check on them.
I walked from town [towards Cane Garden Bay] to check on a friend of a friend. They hadn’t heard from anyone at that house and asked if I could go check on them. I said I would go as soon as I can, and I went early the next day.
It was two women and a child — 3 or 4 years old — and I walked them to another house that was safer. And then from there I went to check other persons.
One thing VISAR did, maybe two or three days after, was get the whole group together at base and said, “Every one of you are first responders. We have gear; please everyone get a kit together and we’re going to go help people.”
Some of us have a little bit more medical training, but pretty much everyone knows basic first response. We were doing everything we could do to help, with or without a boat. We helped on the water but also we helped on land.
Returning to ‘normal’
After three or four weeks we started getting ready for our regular season — one of the boats went out for maintenance — but we’ve still helped out in different ways. The money we’ve gotten from our GoFundMe page and from BVI Strong branded t-shirts and other products, we started giving back to the community.
We’re still restarting with VISAR, but also paying for foods for kids, helping schools and helping the communities in different ways. All the money we get is not for VISAR: It’s for the community. It’s not being used to rebuild our base or fix our boats.
We lost a few volunteers [when they left the territory]; that’s for sure. I understand we lost about 15 to 20 percent of our crewmembers. It’ll be a slower season, but training is still going on and people always come and go in the BVI. It might take a while to go back to the original number of crewmembers, but it’s okay; it’ll go back.
We have a few boats and if anyone has a problem out there we need to be up and running. It will be a smaller season, hopefully with no medical emergencies, but if it happens we need to be there.
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