Jay McNeil, Clinical Psychologist with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, is preparing to answer the call and deploy to Jamaica for immediate search and rescue efforts, with Hurricane Melissa making landfall. A 180 mph Category 5, Melissa has been described by a UN agency as the “storm of the century”, and Jay - part of Serve On, an International Rescue team - is on standby to go out to Jamaica and form part of the response. Jay, who was part of the searching for survivors in Tϋrkiye in February 2023, after a devastating earthquake, is a Principal Clinical Psychologist, and the lead for Burn s& Plastics Psychology as well as having input into Oncology Psychology. However, in his spare time he is also a member of the Serve On charity’s International Response Team, a highly-trained team of Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) experts who respond to disasters anywhere in the world.
He was unable to predict whether the team will deploy or not, depending on the scale of damage and factors such as other resources available to Jamaica, but the Salisbury-based team are on standby and are ramping up preparations to deploy so everything is in place if the worst happens, and their team are needed. Whilst preparing, the team are constantly aware of the desperate situation many will be facing across the region.
If anyone has contacts in Jamaica that would be happy to go onto the team's list of people they may be able to turn to in-country - in particular contacts in local government or civil defence, please contact Elle at elle.wilson@serveon.org.uk or Jay at Jay.McNeil@LTHTR.nhs.uk - although he will only see emails in work hours.
Contacts are desperately needed so the team have up-to-date information about the disaster and security situation, both before and during any deployment.
For more details about the charity and potential deployment, please see their Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin feeds.
Jay has been part of the Serve On team since 2010, when he was living in Essex and got involved. After a gruelling selection process and two years of training, he passed the final five-day test and has been an active member since.
The USAR team trains one weekend a month at their headquarters in London, to help with search and rescue missions with collapsed structures or with other natural disasters such as major floods.
