Relief and Recovery for Puerto Rico
We are a group of organized civilians whos purpose is to help those affected by natural disasters.
Our goal is to provide as much relief as possible without any "red tape".
Our mission is to provide critical and life sustaining supplies and efforts to those in need immediately following any disaster.
We accomplish our mission and reach our goal by way of air, ground and water assets and we provide and have provided search and rescue, recovery and humanitarian aid in Texas and Florida . Our teams are well versed in providing BLS and in triage situations. Once linked up with aour partner search & rescue team, we will have the ability to triage up to 2000 people with the supplies that we will be mobilized with.
Making sure that we have the right supplies, at the right time, to the people that need it the most.
Through our core group of dedicated and experienced team members, we can provide rescue efforts, with targeted assets deployed from the air, ground and water, our assets are not only extremely valuable but are a crucial necessity to help in rendering aid to affected areas when most wont.
Through partners, our volunteer network and boots on the ground, we are able to source donated supplies and deliver aid in a very fast, efficient and extremely effective manner.
"when they can't, we can."
Unfortunately - we are not able to make any type of money to provide this assistance and have never asked for any until now.
As we've grown in our efforts, we have stayed away from home and work and our families for over a month now and have found it exceedingly difficult to maintain financially.
We have such big hearts and are purpose driven but cannot spend anymore of our own money to continue efforts in aid to FL or Puerto Rico and St Thomas without your help.
We all have family and bills and daily lives that we have given up - though we know we weren't asked to do this - we see how many people would still be in need if someone didn't step in to fill the void in the supply and recovery process.
Currently we have a 6 man team deployed into Puerto Rico, as they need search and rescue badly. The island has been devastated and our teams hearts bleed for the people of Puerto Rico.
Up to this point - most of these efforts if not close to 98% have been self funded, but now we need people to support the cause as efforts ramp up in Puerto Rico.
Our main costs are fuel, air travel and accommodations.
we all are used to not showering for days and eating very little while working 18-20 hour days to provide the help that is necessary to bring relief to the affected people that we serve.
Currently our team is in Puerto Rico and has linked up with another search and rescue team that went at the same time.
Our team got one way flights and we need your help to get relief aid and supplies to Puerto Rico and help get the team back when they are finished in Puerto Rico.
If you can fly a plane, have a plane or have fuel or monetary donations, please help in any way you can.
The money donated here will go directly to the efforts of our team on the ground and provide them with any other supplies that we couldn't get on the tiny planes they took to get there.
A portion of the donations will be to get our team back and forth home to the mainland safely and promptly with the aid that is needed.
The time is now and we can not wait any longer. People are dying in Puerto Rico. They need our help and we are already on the ground there. We need help immediately!!!!!
The amount we set for this campaign is no where near what we will need to sustain any longer than a week in Puerto Rico, so please give what you can so that we can stay "boots on the ground' as long as possible.
I urge you to read the story below about our journey and find it in your heart to donate today to help our cause.
The people need you, we need you, your country needs you to be a guiding light in this dark time.
We've set up a non-profit organization but have not yet received a tax exempt status and cannot guarantee any donations will be able to be written off by the donors.
We named our organization "WeCan", because throughout all of these tragic storms - when others said they "can't", we've been able to say "we can"
When the time comes that our paperwork is approved for the tax exempt status, we will update this post.
My Story.....
All of this started with Hurricane Harvey and the destruction and devastation left in its wake.
When I heard of the destruction there, I was immediately driven to help in some way. I got on the internet and the phone and started talking to organizations that were out helping and providing relief.
During the course of the second or third night after the storm hit I was listening in on Zello (an app for your phone to turn it into a two way radio which is used by civilians in a time of need to stay coordinated). That particular night there was a call that came out on one of the various channels and they were speaking about Dam B levees opening and how areas where water had started to subside were about to be inundated again.
After they opened the levees and the flooding ensued, there was a call that came in over the radio about a family with two young children and the flood waters had risen considerably and they weren't able to get out, but that they were standing in the flood water up to their chests holding their children above their heads.
A team responded over the radio and they confirmed that they were enroute by boat to go and try to save this family.
Upon arriving, they reported back that the waters were up to their necks and that they were getting in the water to rescue these people. When that team got there and was able to save this family, that was the defining moment in this trip and the beginning of this journey.
I tasked together a team of individuals from Myrtle Beach, Texas and Louisiana. We set out to raise funds and acquire in kind donations from the local communities. All together we were able to raise $3,200 for trip costs (mostly fuel) as well as a lot of donated goods.
The individuals from Myrtle Beach and the other communities, that had wanted to go with me to Texas, amassed to 8 guys and six trucks.
Then Hurricane Irma was foretasted to run up the east cost of the US and people started backing out of the trip (understandably).
It was at that point that I knew that I would be on the road by myself until I linked up with the people in Louisiana and Texas. So I consolidated donated goods and went it alone.
After meeting up with Kyle Rodgers in Louisiana and Bryan Broussad, we had two trucks and two trailers.
We went to Texas and worked with the JJ Watts Foundation and SpindleTapp Brewery as well as the Texas Navy and the Cajun Navy.
We ran over 43,000 lbs of donations and supplies and clocked over 1300 miles in Texas providing aid and relief by any means possible to the people of the coastal areas.
We started to hear that Irma was getting closer to US and that it my hit FL, GA and The Carolina's and made a decision to leave Texas and head for South Carolina to make sure that I could get back in time to help out at my home in Myrtle Beach, SC.
It was a long drive back to SC and I was already exhausted from Texas but I made it back and was home for 24 hours before we found out that the storm was going to hit FL.
I started calling people that could help in FL and got on various Zello channels to coordinate a team to go down for search and rescue and relief. I was able to link up with a group in the Brandon area that had boats and jet-skis and wanted to help. With us all together we made a 4 man team that was ready to spring into action.
We started to make our way down the coast and finally made it to Key largo where we met up with a gentleman by the name of Captain James Wyse. He was already organizing water led supply drops to portions of the Lower keys that were hardest hit and he needed help getting things down to the lower keys.
Within a few short hours of being there, we had loaded supplies donated by the local community, onto our three boats and the one jetski that we took (spoiler alert, I had to ride the jetski). We commenced on a 200 nautical mile round trip by boat with supplies that morning.
When we got down to SugarLoaf Key and all along the way in the lower keys - the devastation was so heartbreaking and apparent that it made our stomachs churn. Houses dilapidated or completely gone, boats on top of houses and sunken all around the bay and even a box trailer our in the bay (must've been alot of water to make that happen!).
We finally found the house we were looking for and delivered the supplies we had and were met by a man that was so distraught and thought that civilians only went to help Texas and had forgotten about them as no civilian led relief had arrived (besides us ) and FEMA and the National Guard was said, by this individual, to not be helping at all - they we're "just patrolling the streets for looters".
We explained to him that no help was being allowed in and that there were check points and road blocks set up and they weren't allowing civilian help in. It was at this point that he urged us to get in his car and go with him to a local radio station that was trying to get word out to people, as no one had electricity, water or cellphone signal.
At the radio station they put us on the air to explain to the locals that help was here and willing and ready, but that they just weren't allowed in. And on air we vouched to become a guiding light to those affected and in need after this horrible tragedy.
We left there and set back for Key Largo and ended up running low on fuel and then the sun had set and we had no other choice but to find land close by and ride out the night. There was so much debris in the water from the storm that it wasn't worth chancing it to try to make it back at night.
The next morning we started to make our way back and eventually ran out of fuel and had to use the jetski to tow us to another piece of dry land that also had some cell phone service and we were able to call two other members that were helping the day prior.
They came to bring us fuel and we returned back to where we got into the water the day prior.
After that I decided that we needed to really get connected with the local and national community to get the word out about aid and relief that was needed in the Lower Keys. So we started making phone calls, one after the other and another and started to get commitments from locals and people nation wide to ship donated non perishables, cleaning supplies, hygiene and baby products to help in the relief efforts.
With the support of the locals and the country - we were able to amass a large quantity of supplies to hand out and deliver to the community. It was at this juncture, were we realized that this was turning into a coalition of people waiting to help and that it was going to be big.
From then on , we were able to, by way of phone, text, email and Facebook, coordinate efforts to begin being dropped at a single location for distribution down to the lower keys.
We linked up with a generous hotel in Marathon, that just happen to be a short distance from the worst affected areas and it had a dock where we could launch our boats from as they still weren't letting people in by road.
So we organized a community pantry at the Hyatt in Marathon with all the supplies we received so that people could come in and get what they needed.
But it still wasn't enough! We needed more!
There were so many in need and we had to get more supplies. So we made friends with people who explained to us that donations that were not purchased through government contracts were being turned away and told to go back to where they came from. It was then that we asked to be a point of contact for these "unsolicited donations", so that we could get them out to the public instead of them going back to the "sender".
With a steady stream of supplies rolling in, we were able to start providing not only for our "pantry", but for other distribution points further south that didnt have much. All in all, we had become a major if not the largest distributor of unsolicited donations to the lower keys and the people of the keys were very thankful!
As the days went on and the donation distribution points started filling up - the needs shifted to more of a demolition and clean up need. So we began dispatching parts of our team to clear marinas and trees and the other half of our team door to door to hand out donations to people in need.
It grew quickly and people started to ask for us by name. We knew that the only way to sustain, was to create and organization to help fund our efforts. And so, "WeCan" was born.
WeCan Disaster Relief and Recovery was made as a vessel to provide relief and recovery to the people in Florida and Puerto Rico, but also any other disaster in need of help throughout the world.
This is a VERY condensed version of the story and we will update a full version of the story on our website when we are finished in the FL Keys, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas
Sincerely,
Ryan Tyre