Two years ago, pallets of food, water and clothing flooded to Southwest Florida after Hurricane Irma ravaged communities. Locals haven’t forgotten about strangers' kind donations, and Floridians are giving back — this time, to the Bahamas.
Michael DeVolder stood in front of two FedEx shipping trailers, surrounded by half a dozen volunteers and boxes of donations, Sunday at Miromar Outlets. He spent the weekend taking clothes, tents and dog food from charitable locals wanting to help Bahamians in the aftermath of the country’s worst disaster, DeVolder said.
“We’ve all seen the pictures and know the story,” he said.
Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the Abaco Islands on Sept. 1 as a Category 5 storm. The storm slowly drifted over the island of Grand Bahama, home to 50,000 residents. The deadly storm stalled for 30 hours as winds, reaching over 200 miles per hour, buffeted homes and infrastructure.
Hundreds of islanders are missing nearly a month after the storm.
The winds and floods of Hurricane Irma weren’t as deadly as Dorian, but families still faced life-changing damage as homes flooded and rainwater blasted into houses, said Kim Cabrera, teacher at Varsity Lakes Middle School in Lehigh Acres.
“Many of my students were affected by Irma,” Cabrera said.
She drove up to the Miromar Outlet with a dozen black trash bags full of clothes and other necessities. Cabrera started a school donation campaign days after Hurricane Dorian struck.
“I reminded (my students) how bad it was for them (after Irma),” she said. “Students, staff, everybody started bringing stuff in.”
Cabrera planned to use another group to send their donations to the Bahamas, but her deal fell through. She found the Miromar Outlets donation drive Saturday night and knew it was her last shot at getting the clothes to Bahamians.
“The bags were sitting in my garage for weeks,” she said.
No official organizations ran the event. DeVolder has experience running a nonprofit and knew how to get hold of the right people. FedEx offered to ship the items for free, and Miromar Outlets opened its parking lot. A ship organized by the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency is leaving Fort Lauderdale this week, and any donations that reach the pier will get to those in need.
“People want to help but don’t know how,” DeVolder said. “They can’t ship a pallet of water to the Bahamas. We’re giving them an easy option.”
It worked.
He expects to fill nearly two tractor-trailers of needed supplies. A Bahamas representative told DeVolder the islands needed tents for the homeless and pets supplies, he said.
“They said everyone has a dog,” DeVolder said. “So that’s what we asked for.”
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