Help for Sylvie and Braden after Hurricane Dorian

My name is Melinda Tonkovich, and I work at a Junior College in Santa Rosa, CA. I am trying to help raise funds for my student worker, Anetra, and her family in the Bahamas.

Anetra McCartney is an international student at Santa Rosa Junior College from the Bahamas. For six days last week, she waited and worried for news of her mother and baby brother who were missing on the island of Abaco after Hurricane Dorian struck as a Category 5 storm and brought catastrophic damage and death.

The hurricane’s path was originally supposed to travel north of the Bahamas. When it turned west and gained power, Sylvie McCartney and her 3-month-old baby boy took refuge in a townhouse in Treasure Cay. Sylvie was a manager at Treasure Sands, a resort in Treasure Cay. The two-story town houses had concrete walls with hurricane proof windows and doors and belted-down roofs. But the 185-mile winds had the walls moving like Jello and storm surge surrounded the building. She held baby Braden and thought she was going to die.

After the storm passed, looters forced Sylvie and others to leave the townhouses. As they made their way to a shelter in a bank at the community center, they saw dozens of bodies of unfortunate Abaco residents who didn’t survive the winds or flooding.

All cell towers were down and the island had no power, so Sylvie could not contact Anetra or her sister, Laquinta, all week. Anetra didn’t slept much after she lost communication with Sylvie over Labor Day weekend. As the storm’s devastation was broadcast worldwide and there was no word from Sylvie, Anetra added her mother and brother to the list of the missing. She tried to attend classes and work at her job during the day and stayed up nights posting photos and information about her mom to social media groups and searching lists of people alive in shelters.

There was no news on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. Anetra and her sister feared the worst. Finally, on Wednesday, someone in a Hurricane Dorian group on Facebook said they saw Sylvie and Braden and that they were alive and well and awaiting evacuation. Yet there was no confirmation until Thursday, September 5th when Sylvie and Braden reached Nassau and Sylvie was able to contact her daughters.

When Anetra finally talked with her mom, she says they mostly just cried together. “She told me she was so scared and didn’t think she and the baby were going to survive”, she told us after the conversation.  Sylvie has conveyed to her daughters that she is very traumatized from the experience, especially seeing the bodies of women with their babies.

Sylvie escaped with her baby, her phone and a few important documents, but she lost her home and everything else, including her livelihood. It will take years for Abaco to rebound. Sylvie needs help now to rebuild her and Braden’s lives. She has immediate needs of food, clothes and baby supplies and longer term needs of housing and day care.

Please consider making a donation. Every little bit is one step closer to our goal.  All money donated will go directly to helping Sylvie and Braden rebuild their lives. All monies will go directly into Anetra’s bank account as she is headed home to the Bahamas to help out her mom and brother and will be able to make sure they get all that they need.