DOMINICA – British businessman hires private jets to rush supplies to hurricane ravaged island

A British businessman has hired five private jets to help get necessary supplies to the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, which was ravaged by Hurricane Maria just days ago.

Jonathan Brown, who set up his own smoked salmon company when he was 16 before moving to Miami to expand his business empire under the company name MacKnight Food Group, claimed the £5million in relief aid given by the UK would be nowhere near enough to get the island back on its feet.

Dominica, a small 290-square mile island which is 400 miles east from Puerto Rico, had 90 percent of its building destroyed by the category five hurricane and 27 people were killed.

Brown is determined to help the country get back on its feet by coordinating private jets and ships with relief workers and supplies to come to its shores.

Brown, who was born in Keswick, said: ‘Five million pounds is great, but if no one is on the ground to help clear the roads or to help people, all you have is five million in the bank and thousands of people dead.’

Rescue Global, a UK-based nongovernmental organisation which provides disaster relief, has teamed up with Brown. On Saturday, he chartered two jets carrying government officials from Barbados to Dominica to help survey the damage, as well as bringing over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of phones, chainsaws, water filters, batteries, non-perishable foods and other essentials.

Roosevelt Skerritt, Dominica’s prime minister, invited Brown to be the island’s honorary trade ambassador, where the 50-year-old Englishman has helped to sort out trade contracts between the island and the rest of the world.

Yet the infrastructure of the island has been decimated and the 72,000 population has been displaced, with no functional power lines or vital supplies.

‘Imagine what two weeks without power, water, or medicine looks like,’ Brown says. ‘This could be one of history’s worst disasters in the Caribbean.’

He now plans to recruit three more planes which will shuttle between Florida and Dominica, although ground conditions make it difficult as the small airport only has one functioning runway which small planes can land on.

Brown said: ‘It’s not like the disasters in mainland United States like New Orleans, in which [aid workers] can just drive in, fly in, or truck in reasonably quickly.’

He also urged the US not to ignore the dire situation in Dominica after focusing most of its efforts on Puerto Rico.

‘We have military bases in Florida sitting on ready-to-eat meals to take to wars,’ he says. ‘[Dominica] doesn’t have a war, but the country looks like it had a nuclear bomb dropped on it.’