Too rich to get our foreign aid? Tell that to the hurricane-hit families with no food or water

A powerful dispatch from the British dependency where survivors are growing desperate – and angry

when I asked him if he was being looked after well. ‘They say we are too rich to get help,’ he said. ‘I ain’t rich. The whole thing is rubbish.’

The British Government says that it has led the way in the relief effort, delivering food, water and shelter as a matter of urgency to the islands.

A spokesman pointed out that International Development Secretary Priti Patel was in the BVI a few days ago witnessing UK aid being deployed after it was dropped off by HMS Ocean. Around 180 tonnes of UK aid, including food, water, shelter kits and buckets, has been delivered to or bought in the Caribbean. The British Virgin Islands has received much of this support, including four tonnes of food.

Certainly, this week there was aid piled in an area of wasteland near the docks, protected from the elements by a circus tent. It was being guarded by the British military, but locals complained to me that the problem is distribution, that nobody knows that’s going on, and individuals are not allowed to pick up aid from the depot.

It has to first be sent to distribution centres around the island, with complaints that some of the aid is going missing en route.

There are suspicions of pilfering — the new currency around here is stolen generators because of the lack of power — and concerns that once people’s money starts to run out, and with no jobs in sight, the most desperate will take matters into their own hands.

The reality is that the entire British operation was racing to catch up from the start. The first British troops were not mobilised until after the disaster.

What’s more, these elite Royal Marine Commandos were left to borrow weapons and ammunition from local police forces because their equipment had not been airlifted in with them. This was worrying because one of their first jobs was to help round up more than 100 prisoners — including rapists and murderers — who had escaped from the prison during Havoc: A lone badly damaged house stands amid a sea of destruction on one of the islands the hurricane. Almost all have been recaptured. So botched were the supplies that specialist signal troops, brought into ensure the soldiers had decent communications, arrived without radios, meaning troops on the ground were initially forced to communicate using WhatsApp on their mobile phones.

Since the storm, the rest of the cleaning up operation has relied on the goodwill of local people, and the tremendous spirit of the islanders. Asked how they were, almost everyone I spoke to replied: ‘Everything’s gone — but I’m alive.’

James Tattersall, a doctor from Leeds whose mother and father live in the islands, was tracking the hurricane before it hit. ‘I made some calculations based on previous hurricanes, and it looked like it was not survivable — that everyone would die. Luckily that was wrong. But it was bad enough.

‘We had no communications for days,’ he told me at Tortola’s main hospital this week. ‘We have a shortage of dialysis machines. I am having to make decisions about who will get treatment and who won’t. We don’t see any government — we are coping ourselves.’

He is typical of so many here who are selflessly doing everything they can to help the survivors. AL

BRODERICK, a local chef and talented musician — who performed for Barack Obama when he came to stay on Richard Branson’s Necker Island — has set up free food stalls, where he cooks for hundreds of children who are unable to access aid.

Relying on donations from local people and former visitors now living abroad, he’s spent hours cooking and distributing food to those in most need.

He told me: ‘ At all these food stations across the island we are handing out good, nutritious food. We are doing more than 300 meals a day, cooking it here. We are using chicken, carrots and whatever we can scavenge.’

Billionaires such as Page and Branson have also set up their own relief projects. I even met two Haitians who had flown in from that very poor country to help.

What’s unnerving everyone is that the hurricane season is not yet over on these bewitching islands. But the people here are resolute, even though at present they are simply trying to exist from day to day.

The hope now is that the British aid reaches those who need it most, and this corner of paradise can slowly but surely drag itself back to its feet.