Battered isles brace for next hurricane
>> CODRINGTON: Paul De Windt abandoned his home and holed up in his office with his family and pet cat on the island of St Martin to wait out the fury of hurricane Jose.
Days later, his house is uninhabitable, at least 10 people have died on the island, water and power have been knocked out, and half of the homes have lost their roofs after hurricane Irma.
But instead of thinking about the long and painful recovery to come, Mr De Windt was still in his office on Friday, bracing for yet another catastrophe: The next major hurricane was already on its way.
“We are surviving, but we aren’t recovering by any means,” said De Windt, the publisher of The Daily Herald, a newspaper on St Martin. “We are just waiting for Jose.”
At least 20 people died when hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful storms to ever lash the Atlantic, battered the Caribbean this week, obliterating houses and leaving thousands of people homeless with its terrifying winds.
But the region had barely taken stock of its losses before another huge storm threatened to slam into the very islands that had been hit the hardest.
On Friday, hurricane Jose, a powerful storm barreling across the Atlantic in Irma’s wake, was upgraded to a Category 4, bringing with it winds up to 200kph.
On Barbuda, along the easternmost edge of the Caribbean, authorities were evacuating the entire population of 1,600 people to the sister island of Antigua before the next hurricane struck. Irma had already “completely destroyed” the majority of homes and business on the island, the prime minister’s office said, leaving residents with nothing to protect them from the onslaught to come.
In Anguilla, where as much as 90% of homes were damaged this week by Irma, authorities wondered how they could withstand another devastating storm. The ports and the airport remained closed because of damage, they said, so evacuations were impossible. At least one person had already died from the previous storm, and the island’s nearly 17,000 residents were bracing for what came next.
“Everything is destroyed, every building has received damage; it’s been catastrophic,” Darrell Gumbs, a constable in the Royal Anguilla Police Force, describing the damage from Irma as “total devastation”.
He was still answering phones at the police station on Friday, despite the fact that the building’s roof had been blown off. He said residents were using the time between the two hurricanes to clear whatever wreckage they could before the winds turned them into deadly projectiles.
“Preparations are just to try to clean up some of the debris so we don’t have debris flying around,” Mr Gumbs said, indicating there was little specific guidance for residents on what to do next. Some shops had reopened temporarily, and residents were scrambling to stock up.
Back-to-back hurricanes in the Caribbean are not uncommon at this time of year, according the National Hurricane Centre. But the strength of hurricane Irma, which pelted the region with 220kph winds, was unlike anything these particular islands have seen for decades, many residents said.
“We get hurricanes here a lot, so basically we are usually prepared for what to expect,” Mr De Windt said. But this time was different, he said: “The regular measures for hurricanes did not suffice at all.”
Residents of Barbuda scrambled to gather food, water and toiletries as they prepared to leave. Eight hundred Barbudans arrived in Antigua by late Thursday after a mandatory evacuation order was put in effect for hurricane Jose.
“I never experienced anything like that,” said Teline Charles, 33, who was visiting family on Barbuda when Irma struck. “The roof came off during the storm and we actually had to leave the house and run into the car until the eye came, and then we ran for better shelter.”
The island of St Martin, which is split between French and Dutch territory, was dealing with a similar degree of devastation. The island, home to about 75,000 people, had no power and no running water Friday afternoon. Nine people on the French side of the island and one person on the Dutch side died as a result of hurricane Irma. The airports are being used for emergency flights only, so large-scale evacuations before hurricane Jose were impossible on Friday.
“We are really in a dire situation here,” Mr De Windt said. “Food, water and tarpaulins are what we need.”
On Friday, even as eastern Caribbean islands such as Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, St Martin and St Barthelemy braced for hurricane Jose, Irma was still charging through the Bahamas, making its way toward Florida.
In Turks and Caicos, also seemingly out of the path of hurricane Jose, officials were still doing damage assessment. Virginia Clerveaux, director of Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies, said there had been widespread damage to roofs, and flooding.
Power was also knocked out across the islands. The airport remained closed, with the arrival and departure areas flooded under half a metre of water.
About 700,000 people in eastern Cuba were evacuated as hurricane Irma passed. In more isolated, rural areas, authorities encouraged residents to shelter in caves, which have been fitted with lighting, food, water and medical personnel.
Hurricane Irma passed through town of Baracoa on Cuba’s northeast between 3am and 6am on Friday, but brought less damage than many feared. The Bahamas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico may be spared the brunt of hurricane Jose, according to the National Hurricane Centre.