Now stranded Britons scavenge for coconuts
Holidaymakers told there’s no food and water on storm isles as they fend for themselves
FAMILIES of Britons stranded after Hurricane Irma say their situation is ‘becoming critical’ as water supplies are rationed and looting becomes rife.
A couple in Cuba said they had been forced to scavenge for coconuts on the beach, while a British expat said ‘everyone’s turned feral’.
Others in the Caribbean told of their frustration after watching French rescue planes take off half-empty – with the French authorities telling them they ‘didn’t want refugees’ and had not been asked to take British citizens.
Some have had no working toilet and been forced to wash in the sea since the hurricane struck last Wednesday.
Category 5 hurricane Irma barrelled across the Caribbean last week, causing unprecedented destruction and leaving at least 34 dead.
Some areas have descended into lawlessness. In Saint Martin there are reports of widespread looting by a 600- strong group. Some business owners defended their shops with machetes after getting little help from the police.
A British expat whose partner is stranded said he carried a knife for protection as ‘everyone’s turned feral’.
Claudia Knight, 33, runs a school on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands but returned to the UK with her toddler daughter before the hurricane struck. Her marine engineer partner Leo Whitting, 38, stayed behind.
She said: ‘The military is everywhere with machine guns. Everyone’s turned feral and no-one’s going out without being armed.
‘You can’t drive your car without a weapon, it’s turning really nasty. Leo carries a knife.’
The prison was blown open by the storm, meaning the inmates were free to roam, she added.
The British Government has been strongly criticised for its response to the disaster, compared to other countries which promptly evacuated their citi- zens. Bryce White, 26, is stranded in Cuba with girlfriend Sophie Clarke, 23, in a hotel room with six others. They said they had just two litres of water and a few ham sandwiches.
His worried father Richard, 58, from Gloucestershire, said yesterday: ‘They have been told there is no more food or water and have been forced to look for fallen coconuts outside.’
He said some holiday reps on the island ‘disappeared for 24 hours then reappeared, apologised and then got blind drunk’. He added: ‘They keep saying “there’s nothing we can do”. We have begged Thomson to fly them home but they say nothing is wrong’.
On St Martin, Cambridgeshire couple Ross McEwan, 61, and wife Lesley, who turns 63 today, have been marooned for six days.
Mrs McEwan’s sister Elaine Sorensen, 57, said the couple waited for a rescue flight at the airport every day from 5.30am with one Red Cross-issued bottle of water. ‘The French said that because they hadn’t heard from the Foreign Office in an official request they wouldn’t take them because they didn’t want refugees,’ she said. ‘They watched a half-empty plane take off.’
Charlotte Goffe and her husband Ricky, from Warwickshire, are stuck in Cuba with their young son. Mrs Goffe said it was ‘the honeymoon from hell’.
Yesterday Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said ‘there is an unprecedented British effort to deal with what has been an unprecedented catastrophe’.
But the Foreign Office would not directly respond to accusations that it is failing British citizens stranded abroad.
At least 9,000 British passengers flying with Thomas Cook are stranded in Florida and 2,350 passengers are in Varadero, Cuba, the travel company said.
A spokesman said: ‘Our special assistance team is on the ground in Varadero.’
Thomson said reports from their initial investigation suggested any reps drinking were from a tour operator from outside the UK.
TORMENT OF THE HURRICANE BRITS
Yesterday’s Daily Mail