REBUILDING LOS CABOS
Children need school supplies, clothes and food
COCHRANE WOMAN HELPS HURRICANE VICTIMS
It sounded like a freight train. As Brianna Furtney and her husband huddled in the spare bedroom of their condo in San Jose del Cabo, Furtney marvelled at the overwhelming noise of the winds outside.
“The sound is deafening,” Furtney said later, recalling the nervousness she felt as she waited for hurricane Odile to pass.
“It came slowly at first, then it got louder and louder and stronger.” “There’s nothing you can do.” Along with thousands of tourists in the region, including at least 500 Canadians, Furtney and her husband Caleb Clark were rescued from the hurricane- ravaged Los Cabos after Odile made landfall the night of Sept. 14. They left Mexico on Sept. 17 and have been temporarily living with relatives in Cochrane and Calgary.
Furtney was conflicted about leaving San Jose after the storm. She didn’t want to stick around in case there was another hurricane, but she also wanted to help the city she calls home.
“I felt so guilty leaving on the bus and knowing I’d be OK,” said Furtney, who is originally from Cochrane and now lives and teaches English in San Jose. “It was tough to leave.” Though Furtney and Clark aren’t going back to San Jose until Oct. 9, they’re already trying to help out.
They launched a website — canadacares4cabo.com — and a Facebook page to raise money for hurricane relief. The couple’s focus is on making sure children in San Jose have the clothes, food and supplies they need to go back to school.
Power had been restored to 51 per cent of Los Cabos as of Saturday, according to the Mexican government. Only 33 per cent of students have resumed classes in the state of Baja California Sur.
“Everyone’s really putting in a lot of effort to try to make things back to normal,” Furtney said. “As soon as the schools get open, then parents can go back to work and everything can kind of be normal.”
Furtney and Clark have lived in San Jose for four years. They’ve seen heavy rain and high wind before, but never anything like Odile. It was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in Baja California Sur since 1967. It walloped Los Cabos — the sister cities of San Jose and Cabo San Lucas — with 185- km/ h winds.
“Nobody was ready,” said Furtney. “It was shocking and really surprising.”
She and Clark were out for dinner with friends when they saw the hurricane coming. Once they got back to their condo, the couple called some relatives to let them know that they were inside and safe from the storm. The winds were picking up and they got ready for what was going to be a long night.
“It started getting worse and worse,” Furtney recalled. “We moved out of our bedroom into a smaller bedroom because the windows were bending in and out.”
Through the small window in the spare room, Furtney could see metal roofs, palm trees and even a garage door go flying by.
“At one point when it was really loud and we thought something was going to happen, we were just in the closet,” Furtney. The next morning, she had to climb over piles of debris to get out of the condo complex.
“Everything was destroyed,” she said. “Every palm tree was down, every power line, telephone line, every lamppost.
“It was like a bomb had gone off.”
Thankfully, Furtney and Clark’s condo sustained minimal damage, and they’ll be able to return there once they go back to San Jose — a date that can’t come soon enough for Furtney.
“I’m excited to go back and see how much they’ve done.” she said.