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Hurricanes and Other Disasters
Hurricane Hugo - 1989September 15, 1989 -- that's a date I'll remember the rest of my life, because it was the date that Hurricane Hugo hit the Virgin Islands and took almost the entire roof off my home. In the early evening, my wife, daughter, and I went to bed confident that the preparations we had made would keep us and our home safe. As the storm neared, and the winds and driving rains became stronger and stronger, the power authority turned off the city electricity to avoid live wires being downed. But we kept up on the latest status of the storm on local radio station WSTA, which was able to continue operating on emergency generator power throughout most of the night. Miraculously, the telephones also continued to operate, and we were able to keep in contact with my parents and brother, who live less than a mile away but higher up on the hillside from us.
Around 3:00 am, my brother called to let us know that a portion of my parent's roof had been blown away and that they were taking refuge in my brother's nearby apartment. About a half-hour later, he called again, this time from a neighbor's house to let us know that a corner wall of his apartment had collapsed and the family members were all safe at the neighbor. Within less than another half hour, my wife heard the first signs of trouble at our place -- suddenly, the corrugated galvanized steel sheets of our roof (the most common type of roof covering in the Caribbean) began to peel away, to a sound like a huge zipper being opened across the length of our home. With the wind and rain now pounding on the inside ceiling, we were in jeopardy if the weight of the water and pressure of the winds collapsed the ceiling down on top of us. So, my wife, daughter, and I took refuge under a counter that separates our kitchen and formal dining room. We had to stay there for a full 8 hours, until the winds died down around noon the following day, because attempting to go outside with all the flying debris would have been suicide!
As we finally ventured to crack open the door and look outside, what we saw was total devastation. Half of our roof now lay in our driveway, just inches from our two cars. The rest of the roof was on the opposite side of the house, laying in our patio. Every tree, bush, and plant was stripped clean of every single leaf. We could see neighboring houses that, with the vegitation that existed before, we never even knew were there. The site was one that reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bomb explosions!
Hurricane Hugo had pounded the U.S. Virgin Islands with sustained winds of up to 125 MPH for a gruelling 12 hours! The storm left over 2,000 people homeless and caused some amount of damage to an estimated 70 percent of buildings on the island of St. Croix, and only slightly less on St. Thomas and St. John. Because island emergency personnel were unprepared for the total destruction caused by the hurricane, some looting occurred during the first couple of days after the storm (which was widely reported and perhaps over-exaggerated in the national media). Power, telephone, and water service were down throughout the islands and would not be restored to all customers until some 3 to 4 months later. The islands were soon declared a disaster area by President George Bush, and FEMA and other Federal agencies began a massive airlift of personnel and supplies for the islands' shocked residents. In the end, property damage totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollar, but miraculously, there were no more than 3 reported deaths caused by the storm.
For my family and I, the first few weeks after the hurricane was a very trying time, as we sought temporary housing until our home could be repaired and we picked through what little remained of our belongings. Because of the large number of structures needing repairs and the relatively small number of building contractors, it wasn't until July 1990 that the repairs were finished and we could move back home. We all thanked God that we and the majority of the islands' residents had survived the worst hurricane to hit the islands in more than 60 years. Little did we know that a repeat performance was waiting for us only 6 years in the future.
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1996-2010 Arnold E.
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