Waiting for flight out of hurricane-ravaged area frustrates Kitchener man

A Kitchener mortgage broker was poised to leave hurricane-ravaged Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean on Monday afternoon.

Rudy Velickovski, 38, was among 95 stranded Canadian tourists who were sent back to their resort on Sunday after authorities refused to allow them to board a waiting plane.

But on Monday, they were all to board a 3 p.m. flight for Toronto, which had apparently been approved by authorities at Providenciales International Aerodrome.

“I told him, when you get to the airport, you get on any freaking plane that is there. I don’t care. You just come home,” his mother Bobbie said from Kitchener on Monday after texting with her son just after the noon hour.

“Yesterday, my spirits were so high because I thought he was coming home.”

Velickovski and the other Canadians were sup-

posed to leave on Sunday.

Air Canada had been permitted to land a plane carrying electrical workers on a relief mission to help restore power to the island, which had been pummeled by hurricane Irma’s 280 km/h winds on Thursday. But authorities closed the terminal to all but humanitarian flights.

The assembled Canadian tourists never got to the plane that was supposed to take them home.

“We waited at the airport for three hours outside, 47 degrees,” Velickovski texted his Real Mortgage Associates Inc. colleague and friend John Heath on Sunday. “I’m beyond upset guy.” Velickovski went to the Turks and Caicos, an archipelago of islands southeast of Bahamas, on Sept. 3 to vacation and look at some properties.

He was staying at Club Med, his mother said.

When Irma hit as a Category 5 hurricane on Thursday night, all the rooms were boarded up, Velickovski informed his mother.

“He was up in the second level,” Bobbie said. “So it was complete darkness. He said it was very crazy. It was so wild outside. They were told by staff not to leave their rooms.”

On Sunday, Velickovski was supposed to be among the Canadians to leave Turks and Caicos at about 4:30 p.m. On Monday, their flight was to depart around 3 p.m. and arrive in Toronto by 6:30 p.m. His car waited for him at the Park’N Fly, his mom said.

Bobbie hoped to see her son Rudy by day’s end.

“I’m hoping,” she said.