Little did I expect that when I went to visit my mom on St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. on August 29, 2017 that I would go through not one but two Category 5 hurricanes within a 2 week period. Hurricane Irma visited us on Sept. 6 followed by Hurricane Maria on Sept. 19. Even though I was born and raised on St. Thomas I never went through a major hurricane and had already moved from St. Thomas to the U.S. when Hurricane Hugo hit the island in Sept. 1989 and Hurricane Marilyn in Sept. 1995. I remember many times growing up my dad battering down windows in preparation for hurricanes but never getting a direct hit. A lot of rain, wind and flooding yes, and that was about it.

When we heard that we were going to get a direct hit by Irma the preparation and scrambling around started. It’s amazing how much you have to do and the amount of time it takes to prepare for a hurricane so don’t wait until the last minute because it may take a couple of days. Packing away things inside the house you don’t want to get damaged; covering up furniture, beds; moving, tying down or packing away plants, patio furniture and anything else on the outside that will be blown away. The last thing is closing all of the hurricane shutters and hope for the best.

Some of the things that you must do to prepare are (National Weather Service Hurricane Planning):

1. Go to the grocery store ASAP and buy LOTS of drinking water, nonperishable foods, personal hygiene & disinfecting wipes, bleach and cleaning supplies if you don’t already have them, batteries, baby & pet food and whatever other foods and supplies you may need. Also buy ice and keep in the freezer as long as possible and then move them to coolers if necessary. Wish I had done this because there was no ice to purchase after the hurricane.
2. Go to the bank and get as much cash as you can to last for at least 1-2 weeks and fill up your car with gas. If you wait until after the hurricane you will be sorry because when the banks and gas stations eventually open the lines will be very very long. There will also be very long lines at the grocery stores. I saw this with my own eyes.
3. Fill every possible container (plastic bottles, pots, pans, tub, buckets, or whatever you have) in your home with water to use to flush toilets, wash dishes & clothes, cleaning and the list goes on. Be conservative with the water because it may be months before you have electricity and running water again.
4. Pack clothes for at least 3 days, meds, important papers and anything else you may need after the hurricane. Wear sturdy shoes and not flip flops or sandals to protect your feet. Most people don’t think about packing a small bag or suitcase with extras clothes and then their home gets destroyed or severely damaged and all they have to wear is the clothes on their backs.

Going through the hurricanes, especially Irma, is an event I hope to never experience again. My mom and I stayed with our friend and neighbor Pam in her first floor apartment for Irma because we didn’t want to take the chance of staying in my mom’s house in case we lost her roof which thankfully the roof stayed intact even though there was damage to it.

We started feeling the feeder bands winds of Irma on Tuesday, Sept. 5, around mid-afternoon. The winds started really picking up by 10am on Wednesday, 9/6, and by 2:00PM Irma was in full swing. Sitting there in the darkness and listening to the 185 PMH wind howl relentlessly for hours and hours, hearing things hitting and banging around outside is enough to drive you crazy. The wind was so intense that it blew some of the hurricane shutters open and the rain started coming in through the windows, under the sliding glass door that still had the hurricane shutter on and eventually through the ceilings in the bedrooms because part of the roof on the top floor blew off and the rain came in.

We ventured outside around 2:00am on Friday morning since the winds had subsided substantially by then to take a quick look around outside. Even though my mom’s house seemed to be somewhat intact it wasn’t the same for the first two floors of the house where we have rental apartments. The wind completely sucked a window off one of the apartments on the second floor and the tenant and her caregiver were trapped in the bathroom where they had gone for safety and couldn’t get out. My friend Pam had to crawl through the blown out window to get inside and walk through the shambled apartment to get them out of the bathroom. The patio cover for the bottom floor apartment collapsed completely blocking the entryway and the tenant was trapped and couldn’t get out.

Daylight on Friday morning showed us the heartbreaking devastation all around us. You walk around in a daze of utter shock. Completely destroyed and severely damaged homes; downed trees, poles, power lines, traffic lights; overturned cars, boats; debris all over the place. Then the cleanup begins and doing the best you can without running water and electricity. Thank the Lord my mom has a gas stove, which I realize is a MUST, and everyone pitched in and we cooked everything we could knowing the food wouldn’t last long in the frige and freezer without electricity. Unfortunately we still had to throw away a lot of the cooked food because of the heat and humidity.

Communications (phone, internet, etc.) of course was non-existent or very poor for a long time. Whenever I travel, especially if I’m going to be gone for an extended period of time, I have all of the necessary info with me so that I can take care of business, pay bills, and do whatever needs to be done. Even though I use technology to do lots of things like pay bills, online banking, etc. I am an old school kind of person and still use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of important info like bills, accounts, insurance info so that it’s easily available in case I can’t access the info electronically. This saved me after the hurricane.

Lesson Learned: Anything can happen to anyone at any time whether it’s a man-made or natural disaster, accident, death, loss of a job and the list goes on. So the more prepared and organized our affairs are the better we’re able to cope with whatever life throws at us. Don’t wait until something happens to get the ball rolling.

Even though the recovery has started there’s still a lot of work to be done on St. Thomas and all of the other islands in the Caribbean ravished by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. People are still suffering and trying to rebuild their lives with little or no resources to help them. Please pray for the people trying to rebuild their lives and for their safety for the upcoming 2018 hurricane season.