West Palm mercy missions remove elderly from Puerto Rico
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Eighty-year-old Madelaine Hennessey knew two things Tuesday — she needed to get to the battered Isla Grande Airport in Puerto Rico for a precarious rescue attempt or the sputtering generator keeping her oxygen flowing might be her end.
Trump touts “amazing job” helping “destroyed” Puerto Rico.
Hennessey, who has Carcinoid cancer, had been living in a recliner in the lobby of her San Juan apartment building since Category 4 Hurricane Maria brought ruin to the U.S. territory Sept. 20.
“Oh my God, get me out. You have to get me out,” she pleaded in a touch-and-go phone call she managed to her daughter in New Jersey when the universe aligned long enough to muster a cellphone signal.
But it wasn’t until Scott Lewis, who runs the West Palm Beachbased Eagles Wings Foundation, learned of Hennessey’s plight that there was hope of an extraction.
As conditions in Puerto Rico deteriorate and aid missions stumble, Lewis’ foundation wrangled two flights in on Tuesday to drop off supplies and pull out as many vulnerable senior citizens as possi-
ble. Hennessey was on the manifest, as was a 92-yearold woman, who Lewis said was trapped on the sixth floor of a nursing home with no electricity and forced to drink water from the toilet.
Palm Beach County law firm Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley paid for the operation.
“I see the potential for the nursing-home deaths that happened during Irma to exponentially happen in Puerto Rico,” Lewis said. “There are extremely urgent unmet needs.”
Lewis, a veteran in the disaster recovery business with his nonprofit Eagles Wings Foundation and Pathfinders Task Force, said the situation in Puerto Rico is dire and occurring in an environment where two preceding disasters — hurricanes Harvey and Irma — are complicating getting help to the island.
Flying into Puerto Rico is a challenge in itself, but with relief efforts still occurring in the Keys and Houston, navigating charter flights in the U.S. is also proving tricky. Lewis said one of the biggest challenges this week was getting a private plane into Palm Beach International Airport.
“There are eight small countries suffering catastrophic problems in the Caribbean, and then Houston and the Keys,” Lewis said. “People aren’t grasping the size and complexity of this situation.”
Lewis’ flights Tuesday were made with the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard, which was contacted by a tenacious Virginia woman who is lifelong friends with Hennessey’s daughter.
Lisa Suhay, news editor for the Waterway Guide in Norfolk, said she spent days trying to reach someone to help Hennessey, making calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, the National Guard and local police. When that didn’t work, she called the Coast Guard, which transferred her to the District 7 office in Miami.
“They asked me if I knew who I was calling, and I said, yes, I know who I’m calling, the people who can find someone in the middle of the ocean, pluck them out, and bring them home,” she said. “Surely they could help Sally.”
Sally is Hennessey’s nickname. During Suhay’s attempt to reach someone to help Hennessey, she started using the hashtag SOS (#SOS) for “save our Sally.”
The Coast Guard helped Suhay reach Lewis and then it was a matter of coordination.
“They have arranged what no one else could,” Suhay said about Eagles Wings. “I just can’t say enough good things about this foundation.”
South Florida residents with relatives in Puerto Rico hope more missions like the one Tuesday will make their way to the island.
Cherryl Muriente, of West Palm Beach, grew up in Puerto Rico and still has relatives there.
She said it’s hard to watch the hardship from the outside, and that while people are mostly being civil and helping each other now, she fears what will happen when food and water become even harder to find.
“What happens a month from now when they are still without power and clean water?” she said. “For those of us not there, we need to try to stay calm and do as much as we can to facilitate experts going there to help with supplies and restoration.”
The Trump administration is sending additional resources to Puerto Rico to step up the federal response to Maria, including a flotilla of ships and thousands more military personnel, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long said the devastation wrought by the storm presents unique logistical challenges for the federal response. He said demolished airports and seaports have made it difficult to get aid and personnel to the stricken island.
That’s why efforts such as Tuesday’s rescue by the Eagles Wings Foundation are so important, Suhay said.
“It is the most pure, clean thing I have ever seen take place for disaster relief,” she said.
Lewis, who also owns a landscaping company, has led recovery efforts for 28 hurricanes, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
This year, Lewis and his team have already spent weeks in Houston after Hurricane Harvey and in the Keys after Hurricane Irma struck Sept. 10.
“I’ve never had anything like this before — Harvey to Irma to Maria,” Lewis said.
On Tuesday, Hennessey managed to get an Uber to the Isla Grande Airport in San Juan. There were some tense moments when she was momentarily lost after agreeing to go with another pilot to Miami while she was waiting for an Eagles Wings Foundation member. Suhay said the Coast Guard tracked her down and got her on the correct flight.
“The situation is rapidly deteriorating,” Lewis said in a text message. “There are 3 million people in Puerto Rico. The news has not caught the full impact of what’s about to happen there.”