WCK's Response to Hurricane Melissa (Oct. 2025)

Hurricane Melissa made historic landfall near New Hope, Jamaica, as a catastrophic Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph—the most intense Atlantic hurricane of 2025 and the strongest ever to strike Jamaica.

This marks WCK’s second hurricane response in Jamaica, following Hurricane Beryl in 2024. After Beryl left a trail of devastation from the Caribbean to the northeastern United States, WCK mobilized across five countries.

For Hurricane Melissa, members of WCK’s Relief Team prepositioned in Miami several days prior to landfall, enabling the rapid deployment of relief once it was safe. WCK is active across 11 parishes, serving over 300 recipient locations from churches, hospitals, and schools to shelters and indigenous Maroon communities. A team of 150 local staff and over 80 vehicles ensures daily delivery and our air operations remain essential, with up to ten helicopter drops each day to places still inaccessible by road.

Our relief operations are centralized in three major hubs: Montego Bay , Negril , and Mandeville. Two primary WCK kitchens are cooking alongside 60 local restaurant partners. We’re also supporting community kitchens with staples, cooking equipment, and fuel to help them continue serving their neighbors.

WCK has expanded our Hurricane Melissa response to support families across Cuba impacted by the storm. Working with Friends of Cáritas Cubana and Cáritas Cuba, we’re distributing food kits to families able to cook for themselves. Each kit includes enough ingredients for 25 meals, providing essential nourishment as communities recover. WCK teams are also supplying kitchen equipment to households that lost appliances needed to prepare meals.

WCK is first to the frontlines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. When disaster strikes, WCK’s Relief Team mobilizes to the frontlines with the urgency of now to start cooking and provide meals to people in need. By partnering with organizations on the ground and activating a network of food trucks or emergency kitchens, WCK provides freshly made, nutritious meals to communities impacted by disasters quickly and effectively. We know that good food provides not only nourishment, but also comfort and hope, especially in times of crisis around the world.

WCK has provided more than 500 million fresh, nourishing meals for communities around the world. Your donation today will be used to support our emergency food relief efforts.

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