MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We turn now to Dana Sacchetti. He is the head of the Jamaica office of the World Food Programme. He is with us from Kingston. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking the time.
DANA SACCHETTI: Thanks. Thanks very much, Michel.
MARTIN: And I hope you're well.
SACCHETTI: Yes. Yes. Thankfully, I am. I wish the same could be said for the millions in Jamaica this morning.
MARTIN: So what can you tell us about the situation where you are in the capital?
SACCHETTI: Kingston was spared. There's damage to infrastructure, power lines down. So roads have issues, have blockages in Kingston. As we were seeing Melissa bear down on Jamaica over the last couple of days, that was a critical fear, that we would see Kingston, the administrative capital, be heavily, heavily affected by this historic storm. But thankfully, we saw that the storm did move further west. But the devastation in the west and south of Jamaica is absolutely cataclysmic, Michel.
MARTIN: I understand that St. Elizabeth Parish is known as the bread basket of Jamaica. It grows a lot of the island's produce, and we just heard from a local official there who said that the entire parish was underwater yesterday, with lots of infrastructure destroyed. How does that affect efforts to keep people fed throughout Jamaica?
SACCHETTI: It'll have a dramatic impact on the food security for Jamaica for the days, weeks and months to come, Michel. We were working with the national government last year in response to Hurricane Beryl. This was a hurricane that moved to the south of Jamaica. It was a Category 4 storm, arrived early in the season, one of the earliest hurricanes to occur in the Atlantic hurricane season. This same - that hurricane last year impacted St. Elizabeth, that same parish that you're correct in reporting that Minister McKenzie mentioned is now underwater. The impact to food security in Jamaica was dramatic, and we saw that the status of food security, the ability of people to feed themselves had been impacted as a result of Beryl last year.
And cruelly, Hurricane Melissa did move and have a direct impact on that same parish, that same region in Jamaica. So we are expecting that there will be a dramatic impact on the country's ability to feed itself for the months to come.
MARTIN: So what are your team's priorities today?
SACCHETTI: We are moving to the field this morning with partners, with support of the national government to get a first look and situation awareness as to the extent of the damage and the impact on communities. We understand that the government is working around the clock to get roads cleared to establish access to many areas. Telecommunications contact with some of the first responders in many parts of the country was severely impacted. We have no sense of the total loss in terms of loss of life. But it's our interest this morning to get to the parishes, the regions in the country that were impacted so we can start to put shape and form on what we expect to be a significant humanitarian response.
MARTIN: So, you know, our colleague Eyder Peralta noted that Jamaica does have a pretty extensive network of shelters. But there was concern that people weren't going to the shelters. Do you know whether people eventually did go to the shelters?
SACCHETTI: I believe they did. Jamaicans often prefer to - they're very resilient people. They do want to stay at home. They're not strangers to storms and hurricanes. The government did its utmost to open shelters and evacuate people from coastal and low-lying areas. You know, this is a country where you have - most of the population - 70% of the population lives within a few miles of the sea. So even if you were able to evacuate many persons, it's an effort that would really take all hands on deck. So we're really needing to establish exactly where people are, what are their needs, are they able to take shelter, and how can we support them with critical food, water and essentials over the coming days.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, cuts to USAID this year, which we've extensively reported on, had a significant impact on organizations like the World Food Programme. Has that affected your efforts to provide relief, or at least to have supplies in place in advance of this?
SACCHETTI: Yeah. I want to say that we express gratitude to the U.S. We were able to secure funding from the U.S. government leading into the hurricane season earlier this year, which is going to be critical to help kickstart our operations and provide food assistance to those who are impacted and through support to nationally or regionally led responses. But we are going to need significant additional investment from donors, government partners, your listeners, if they do have the ability to donate, to our operation at wfp.org and clicking donate. That will really help us to support Jamaica and to save lives during this emergency.
MARTIN: That's Dana Sacchetti, the head of the Jamaica office of the World Food Programme. We reached him in Kingston. And thank you so much for talking with us.
SACCHETTI: Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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