Locally, Irma hits home
Woonsocket mother, son survive catastrophic hurricane while at their Saint Martin residence
Rachel Zielinski of South Main Street now knows just how dangerous the full force of nature can be after she and her son, Anthony, barely survived Hurricane Irma’s recent assault on Saint Martin in the Caribbean.
Zielinski and Anthony, 20, the youngest of her three sons, opted to stay at her second home in Orient Bay as Irma approached the French and Dutch island while following an initial view that the hurricane was not a severe storm likely to pose a major threat to the island.
Zielinski has owned property on the island for several years and has a number of friends on the French, Saint Martin side of the island.
She had started out with a time share and then owned a small villa at the beach before buying a larger fourbedroom, two-level home there in May.
Zielinski and her son had returned to stay at the beach house before the hurricane season started to become troublesome and were given advice by their neighbors on what to expect.
Although she had experienced some tropical storms that went through islands while staying there in past years, Zielinski had missed the last actual hurricane that went through in 2014.
As Irma began to build in the Caribbean, Zielinski said no one she knew seemed to think it was going to grow into the massive storm it became, a Category 5 and the most powerful of hurricanes.
“It started coming in as a Category 3 but it changed very fast,” she recalled back in Woonsocket this week.
“They didn’t think it would be that bad and told us “just do this and do that and you will be at set,” Zielinski said.
Taking the advice to heart, Zielinski said she started to make preparations for the approaching storm similar to what anyone in the United States would do while getting ready for a hurricane-- buy extra batteries for flash lights, non-perishable foods and plenty of bottled water. She even filled up all the containers and pails she could find at her home with water and put them in the shower to be ready if needed. She completed all of that as she continued to recover from a series of strokes she suffered last year.
Zielinski’s new home was located at one end of Orient Bay Beach only 500 feet from the shore and protected from the water only by some popular beach clubs in the area the Kon Tiki Club, Bikini Beach, and Waikiki .
Despite all of her hurricane preparations, Zielinski said she was surprised when her friends Corinne and Alain Roland, natives of France, told her the storm was getting worse and she wouldn’t be able to stay at the beach.
As the storm approached with growing intensity, Princess Juliana International Airport, famous for planes flying low over the beach on landing approach, shutd own and there was no way off the island.
THE MORNING before the storm came ashore on Sept. 5, Corinne came by her home and said very authoritatively that Zielinski and Anthony could not stay in the house during the storm.
“She said ‘your house is too close to the sea. The sea is going to rise and take your house away.”
Corinne said she would make arrangements for Zielinski and Anthony to stay in a place on higher ground down at the opposite end of the beach at Mont Vernon.
That was about three miles away down the beach but Zielinski said Corinne was adamant that she had to go there. The place was a small apartment in a three-story complex for artists and trades people and Zielinski said Corinne told her to pack some things, including her important papers, and they would go there immediately.
Zielinski followed her friend’s advice and she and Anthony were soon at the small apartment with two other people planning to stay there.
As night fell and Irma began to arrive off Saint Martin, Zielinski said the other people left and just she and Anthony remained in the second story apartment.
When Irma struck, Zielinski said she could not even describe how bad things turned. The Category 5 hurricane came in with winds over 200 miles an hour and the more powerful gusts blew down buildings in their path. Then a storm surge she could only describe as a tsunami, with waves over 25 feet high, began to tear at buildings near the beach.
“They hit my house (the home they had left) and washed out the whole downstairs,” she said. Only the main supports of the building and the upper floor was left after the storm passed, she said.
Where she and Anthony stayed also sustained severe damage. The power went out and they were left in complete darkness and then as the sound of a freight train roared through the area, the building’s roof came off and part of one wall.
“It was so loud in my ears I was getting the dry heaves,” she said.
The apartment had two glass doors to an outside landing and Zielinski said she could see that they were bowing out because of the wind. “All I could think of was that they were going to come off their tracks and we were going to get sucked out of the building,” she said.
Zielinski put Anthony in the bathroom in the home and had him take a pillow to protect his head. She stood in the doorway and waited. The worst of the storm hit at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday and continued into Wednesday morning.
At one point in the storm, Zielinski and Anthony heard a loud crash and Anthony reported see a car going by the window in the bathroom. There was another crash and then the vehicle’s alarm went off, Zielinski said.
“It was pitch black. There was no electricity,” she said. Luckily, Zielinski had brought a small flashlight with her and they were able to see around inside the apartment. She also had a small radio but couldn’t use it during the height of the storm.
“Water was coming in everywhere and the sheetrock was caving in,” she said. Zielinski said there was even water coming out of the electric outlets.
“At that point in time, you are picking your priorities of what you are going to do,” she said. She and Anthony blocked the door of the apartment with a chair and put the refrigerator up against it, too,” she said.
By 8 a.m. the storm finally started to move off and things began to get less noisy outside.
From 1 to 8 a.m. doesn’t sound like a long period of time, but Zielinski said it felt like a lifetime as the storm raged.
WHEN IT WAS OVER, she said she couldn’t believe the silence that settled over everything.
She and Anthony waited a while but eventually made their way out to the stairs of the apartment and looked outside.
“It looked like someone had dropped a bomb,” she said. Everything around them was destroyed. The terrace part of the building they were in was also heavily damaged and Zielinski said there was barely enough of the stairway left for them to make their way down to the grounds.
“When I look back on what was left of the building, I said ‘Oh my God, how did we survive,’” Zielinski said. The roof was gone and a side of the building had also been blown away, she added.
From that point on, it was a matter of making minuteto-minute decisions, she said. “There was nothing that was not devastated around us and your priorities change,” she said.
Zielinski and Anthony stayed at the damaged building the first day, but as the rain continued to pour in she knew they had to find a better place to live. After gathering up the things they brought with them, they walked down the devastated beach area to their home at the other end.
The winds and water had carried away the vegetation in the area and the palm trees and all of the beach clubs near the water were also gone. The only thing left near the water was the beach sand, she said.
In the residential areas near the beach, all the buildings had some level of damage or had been leveled.
“Everything was destroyed and there were piles of trash and debris everywhere,” Zielinski said while recalling how she saw debris from buildings, broken glass, trash and dead animals in the devastated areas.
Back at her house, Zielinski found a palm tree had landed on her car and that everything had been washed out from the lower level of the home. Her refrigerator was found about a mile away lodged against a Kia. The second floor of the home was livable, but did not have any power, lighting or running water. The roof was partially damaged but did protect them from the rain, she said.
With the evidence of the force the winds and of the water that had washed through the area all around them, Zielinski said she knew that she and Anthony would not have survived if they had stayed in her home.
“If my friends had not come to move us to higher ground we would have lost our lives,” she said.
Initial reports after the storm listed 11 people as having died in the hurricane and 95 percent of the buildings on the French side, and 75 percent of the buildings on Dutch side as suffering damage or having been destroyed.
In the following days, Zielinski said she and Anthony devoted all of their time and energy to finding the simplest items of basic survival, food and water. All of her supplies were gone and they had to go look in the debris for non-perishables like the other residents of the island. There was looting occurring around them and Zielinski said that when she talked to the local gendarmes, they indicated people had to do what they had to do to survive.
“There was no place that we could go because there were no shelters, no hospitals and no way to get out because the airport was destroyed,” she said.
A cruise ship was sent to the island in the aftermath of the storm to pick up people trying to leave, but it docked in Philipsburg, on the Dutch half known as Sint Maarten. Zielinski said she would have had no way to get to other side given the state of the roads, some with sinkholes caused by the flooding, and lack of a vehicle.
During the four days she and Anthony stayed in their home, the highlight meal was an apple for each of them and some bread she obtained. The water they drank came from small bottles they were able to pull from the debris.
Things did not appear to be improving as time went on, and Zielinski said she and Anthony could hear people coming into the lower level of her house looking for things during the night.
One man told her not to worry, that people were only taking wood and materials to build temporary shelters on the beach, but Zielinski said she could see thing were getting more desperate.
On the fifth day, a man coming to secure a home in her neighborhood told Zielinski she should not try to stay in the devastated area any longer and offered to take her to a place where she could connect with French Red Cross relief efforts.
She and Anthony took the ride and were taken to a fire station where the man convinced the authorities there to take them in. They were then transported to the French side’s airport for small planes where people were being flown to nearby Guadalupe to then arrange travel elsewhere.
BACK AT HOME, Zielinski said her sister Jeanne and son, Zethariah, had been calling everyone they could to get information and had even tried the U.S. Embassy and local Congressional representatives, all with no success.
“They kept telling them there was nothing they could do,” Zielinski said while voicing disappointment over the lack of emergency assistance she encountered.
“When we got to Guadalupe, we were told they didn’t speak English and that there was no U.S. Embassy there,” she said.
Her family members were able to reach a representative in Sen. Jack Reed’s office and were told that she should make her way to a free shelter, but Zielinski said noth- ing like that existed where they had been.
Zielinski’s family was eventually able to make arrangements for them to fly to Puerto Rico the next day and then, from there, to New Jersey and finally home to Rhode Island.
The problems she experienced in trying to get out of the hurricane-damaged area left Zielinski with concerns over the resources available to Americans abroad.
“If you get stuck in a foreign country, they are not going to help you,” she said, citing her own experience.
Now that she and Anthony are back in Woonsocket, Zielinski said she plans to wait several months before attempting to return to Saint Martin to start repairing her home there.
“My house is still standing and I will go back there and rebuild the downstairs. I have insurance,” she said.
But Zielinski said she also remains concerned about the friends she left behind who may still be living without electricity, running water, and few resources for food.
“I seriously think about that everyday because I have so many friends there and since the storm only two have texted me,” she said.
Anthony said on Friday that he, too, has been following the aftermath of the storm through reports online and in the news.
He, of course, knows exactly how bad the storm was on Saint Martin.
“Hurricane Irma was traumatic and devastating,” he said. “It was like hell and very shocking and frustrating. It was a whole other world, and it was like World War I all over again.”
Anthony said he wants to go back, too, but only after the power has been restored and people can begin to use the tools they need to fix things.