Vulnerable Caribbean islands devastated by hurricane,
Islands of Barbuda, St. Martin saw 95% damage, destruction.
Apocalyptic scenes of flat- tened buildings and ruined airports emerged from once- lush Caribbean islands devastated by historic Hurricane Irma as the deadly storm lashed vulnerable Haiti, where one government offi- cial called it a “nuclear hurricane” — even as another potent storm, Hurricane Jose, followed fast in Irma’s wake.
About 95 percent of the islands of Barbuda and St. Martin sustained some damage or were outright destroyed, officials and local residents said. Ghastly pho- tos and videos from St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, also known as St. Barts, showed buildings in ruin and cars and trucks almost submerged in the storm surge.
“Everything is a disaster, total devastation,” Dieter Schaede said by telephone from St. Martin, where he lives. “Roofs down, houses totally flown away, wiped out.”
For those on the islands already ripped apart by Irma’s ferocious winds, there is little time to regroup: The National Hurricane Center said Friday that Jose is strengthening as it churns toward the Leeward Islands.
In an urgent midday bul- letin, officials sounded the alarm — yet again — announcing: “JOSE NOW AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY 4 HURRI- CANE.”
Hurricane watches and tropical storm warnings were in effect for Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Barts and St. Martin as the National Hurricane Center noted that Jose’s sustained winds have been measured at up to 150 mph, with even stronger gusts.
“I’m going to urge the residents, those who are defiant, to evacuate the island,” Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, told the BBC. “We can not afford a situation in which Barbuda is hit by yet another hurricane, Hurricane Jose.”
Browne said Irma had left the majority of Barbu- da’s nearly 2,000 residents homeless.
“The entire country is dec- imated; it’s uninhabitable,” Michael Joseph, the president of the Red Cross in Antigua and Barbuda, said Friday. “I would literally say that 100 percent of the infrastructure is gone. Light, water, communication — it’s a total blackout.
“Imagine a deserted island in the middle of nowhere. Like that. No buildings, all the roofs gone, concrete ripped in half. Most animals died; I saw many dead animals,” he added.
Surprisingly, Joseph said, there was only one fatality on the island — a 2-year-old boy.
“It was a miracle that there was only one death. When you look at the carnage, you ask how anybody at all survived,” he said.
W hen Craig Ryan, a 29-year-old tourism entre- preneur who lives in Antigua, reached Barbuda by boat, residents lined the beach waiting for rescue.
“It’s such a level of devastation that you can’t even see structures standing,” he said.
Ryan’s family business, Tropical Adventures Anti- gua, dispatched a 75-foot m otorboat to make t he 90-minute passage between islands to ferry people off Barbuda before Jose’s potential arrival. Some residents remain stuck in isolated areas blocked by impassable roads, he said by telephone, as he loaded water and other supplies at a dock in Antigua.
“We really are in a rush against time,” Ryan said.
On St. Martin, there was lit- tle sense that authorities had the situation under control. Witnesses said supermarkets were being looted, with no police visible in the streets; France’s minister for overseas territories, Annick Girar- din, even described “scenes of pillaging” on the island.
“It’s like someone with a lawn mower from the sky has gone over the island,” Marilou Rohan, a European vacationer on the Dutch side of St. Martin, which is split with France, told the NOS news service. “Houses are destroyed. Some are razed to the ground. I am lucky that I was in a sturdy house, but we had to bolster the door, the wind was so hard.”
Occasionally, soldiers have passed by, but they were doing little to impose order, Rohan said.
“People feel powerless. They do not know what to do. You see the fear in their eyes,” she said.
With electricity out and communications down, Schaede said the horror stories are just starting to filter through the community. “Houses have been totally wiped out, with people in it,” he said. “We don’t know the end of the disaster.”
He added: “It’s terrible. It will take a couple years to rebuild.”