A baseball team from the Dominican Republic has been stuck in Toronto for a week because of Hurricane Maria, and it looks like it could be nearly another week before they can return home.
The Santo Domingo Utesa baseball team flew to Toronto from a tournament in Kamloops, B.C., when Air Canada informed them their flight home to the Dominican Republic was cancelled due to the approach of Hurricane Maria.
After being rescheduled three times, the team was planning to leave Friday, but that flight was cancelled, with the airline telling them it’s still too dangerous to fly into the island.
Hurricane Maria made landfall on the east coast of the Dominican Republic Thursday as a Category 3 storm, with wind gusts up to 185 kilometres per hour.
The team now has to wait until Sept. 30 for another chance to fly home.
In the meantime, they have been relying on the goodness of strangers for help, since the team raised money for their trip, but not enough for an extra fortnight in Canada.
“I think last week it was just a matter of getting it through the week,” Rachel Ramnarain, who runs a baseball academy in Toronto and has been helping the team with food and lodging, told CTV Toronto. “This week is survival because we didn't expect a whole entire week.”
“People are still offering to cook meals or bring things like cases of water which is good. I can't expect everyone to donate what they don't have, but anything helps.”
The team has started a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising $5,000 to get them through the week. As of Monday morning, the page raised $325 in 21 hours.
With a report from CTV Toronto’s Austin Delaney
