Hurricane Tomas devastates island of St. Lucia

Hurricane Tomas skirted the shores of Haiti on Nov. 5, dumping rain and increasing the risk of cholera. (See our earlier blog post.)
As we wait for new reports from Haiti, one of our readers has alerted us to a disaster on the island of St. Lucia. The island nation of about 174,000 souls is part of the Lesser Antilles, southeast of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
About a week before Tomas moved past Haiti, the storm caused major damage to St. Lucia, a popular destination for cruise ships (and the site of the 2011 Caribbean Lectures for Churches of Christ).
Tomas killed at least 14 people on the island, and Prime Minister Stephenson King estimates that it could take half a billion dollars to repair the damage, according to caribbean360.com.
Hardest hit was the capital city of Castries, as detailed in this news report:

The L’Anse Road Church of Christ is in Castries. Andrew Solomon is the minister. There’s also a congregation in View Fort, near the international airport.
I have left phone messages and sent e-mails to church contacts in St. Lucia, but have received no response. St. Vincent and the Grenadines also were hit by Tomas. I haven’t received any information from church members there.
If anyone has information on these congregations, please post here or contact me.
(Thanks to Lisa Kesler of the Desert Valley Church of Christ in Casa Grande, Ariz., for contacting us about this.)

• Feedback
  I heard back from a church member on St. Lucia and have written an <a href=”https://christianchronicle.org/blog/2010/11/update-after-hurricane-christians-in-st-lucia-face-water-crisis/” rel=”nofollow”>updated post</a>. Now I am looking for a U.S. church that is willing to act as a collection point for relief funds for St. Lucia. Thanks.

  Erik Tryggestad

  November, 12 2010