CANADIANS DESCRIBE ‘SHEER TERROR’ OF IRMA
‘Right now, there is no island of St. Maarten,’ Toronto woman says, as Florida braces for a direct hit,
Worried Canadians are frantically trying to get in touch with friends and relatives trapped in the wake of hurricane Irma, after it hit the Leeward Islands in the West Indies.
A Category 5, the strongest hurricane there is, Irma cut a swath through the Caribbean for four days, killing at least 22 people, downing power, destroying buildings and causing massive flooding.
Irma flattened Barbuda, to the north of Antigua, and both the French-Dutch island of St. Martin/ St. Maarten and Anguilla, which lie to the east of the Virgin Islands.
Morvarid Sanandaji, a 24-year-old medical student from Toronto, is trapped in St. Maarten where she studies.
“Right now, honestly, there is no island of St. Maarten,” Sanandaji told the Star on Friday.
“There is no structure on this island right now that you would be able to live in.”
She’s keeping shelter along with around 600 students, faculty and their families at the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, awaiting evacuation.
When the hurricane went through the island Wednesday, Sanandaji described a scene of “sheer terror.”
“Not a lot of people were talking . . . . Everybody was waiting for it to pass. I know there were people who were panicking,” she said.
Injuries range from cuts from shattered glass to sprained ankles to broken legs, and people are still missing, Sanandaji said.
Sanandaji resorted to using a rental car she and some others found to go out and secure provisions. Its windows were blown in, and the doors had caved, but it had to do.
“As much stuff as we could fit in the car, we were just trying to get back to the building,” she said.
“We’re lucky because we can go somewhere else, but the people who have been born here, raised here . . . they have nowhere else to go.”
Geeta Wadehra can’t stop calling the Global Affairs Canada crisis line out of concern for three friends, who are trapped in a St. Maarten condo, unsure how to get food or water.
“The one time they tried to leave the apartment they witnessed a robbery,” said Wadehra, who has been able to reach her friends over the phone intermittently.
Wadehra’s friends noticed a Dutch military presence, but told her they haven’t received guidance about how to get out of the destroyed island.
In Brewers Bay, Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, about 150 kilometres to the east of Puerto Rico, 59-year-old Anita Gulliver is safe, but her exact whereabouts is unknown, her daughter Natalie told the Star.
“The most that I know is that I got a text message with a photograph of a note that someone had written saying that she was safe,” Natalie said. “I have no further information; I’m hoping that she’s safe.”
The last time Natalie talked to Gulliver, a Toronto expat now living in the Caribbean, her mother was sheltered in a shower.
“It was a very emotional phone call,” Natalie said. “A lot of goodbyes. We weren’t sure that we were going to ever see each other again.
“At that point, the wind was already blowing and they were already terrified. And we were still, like, six hours away from the eye of the storm actually hitting them,” Natalie said.
Natasha Nystrom, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, said in a statement that the government is updating its travel advisories page, and sending affected Canadians messages over email, text and social media.
The storm raged past Cuba’s northern coast Friday toward the Bahamas and Florida, threatening the state with destruction not seen in a generation.
The crush to leave Florida had millions of people on the move. Highways were jammed, gas was scarce, airports were packed and mandatory evacuations began to roll out as the first official hurricane watches were issued for the region, which could face destruction not seen since Category 5 hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Hurricane Irma has forced Florida attractions, including Walt Disney World’s four theme parks, to close their doors to guests. Cruise lines have cancelled voyages.
Airports and airlines raced to get flights off the ground Friday. Airport parking garages in Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale were full, and officials warned people of long lines and disrupted flights. At least 875 arriving and departing flights had been canceled by midday at those airports.
Those on islands already devastated by Irma hope for safety and to rebuild their houses and wearily prepare for hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm that could hit within the next two days.
But while those islands braced for more destruction, Jose, for now, does not pose much of a threat to the U.S. mainland.
Officials in Georgia and the Carolinas, where heavy rains and flooding are expected early next week, have declared emergencies, and late Friday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ordered mandatory evacuation Saturday morning of the state’s eight barrier islands off the southern coast. With Star wire services