Church Response to Hurricane Dean

As Hurricane Dean made a second Mexican landfall, this time as a category-2 storm, local Church leaders continued to work with local officials in Jamaica to determine how best to help residents recover from the devastation Dean left behind as a category-5 hurricane.

Dean brought hurricane-force winds to much of Jamaica on Sunday, August 19, 2007, but the 145-mile-per-hour (233-kilometer-per-hour) winds near the eye of the storm skirted to the south of the island. Members and missionaries were reported safe, although many members’ homes sustained roof and other damage.

Dean made landfall on the Caribbean coast of Mexico on August 21. The eye of the storm passed over a sparsely populated area of the Yucatán Peninsula, 40 miles (64 km) east-northeast of Chetumal, Mexico. Dean reenergized as it passed through the Bay of Campeche and hit the central Mexican coast about 100 miles (160 km) north of Veracruz, Mexico.

Members and missionaries were reported safe. Church leaders had arranged for safe housing and sufficient food and water for missionaries, and bishops’ storehouse personnel in Mexico were ready to ship humanitarian aid if needed.

Hurricane Dean damaged buildings and this construction in Dominica as well as structures in Jamaica and Mexico.

Photograph courtesy of Associated Press/by Johnny Jno-Baptiste