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[h=1]‘I thought I was gone:’ What it’s like to be rescued from Hurricane Irma by U.S. airmen[/h]
Damage as of Thursday in Orient Bay on the French Caribbean island of St. Martin, after the passage of Hurricane Irma. (Lionel Chamoiseau/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Wednesday evening found Brian Poe hunkered down in a commercial kitchen, which in some ways was not unusual, as he is a chef by trade. But this particular kitchen was nearly 2,000 miles from his home in Boston, at a resort on the island of St. Maarten.
Moreover, at that moment, the kitchen and Poe and 100-some other terrified guests were all in the eye of Hurricane Irma.
The kitchen was flooding, Poe recalled. The ballroom had already started to cave in. The resort’s general manager, suddenly transformed into a shepherd of terrified souls, used the eye’s brief calm to lead his flock to higher ground.
“He said, ‘We have to do this,’ ” Poe recalled. “Don’t stop moving.’ ”
They didn’t. Poe and his wife, who had been celebrating their anniversary, scrambled up the stairs of the howling, shaking, soaking Sonesta resort. One floor, then another. On the fifth floor, they paused and held on to whatever they could, as floors six and seven went into the sky.
For the next 48 hours, they’d keep moving — from one uncertain shelter to another, across an obliterated country, and finally to a half-flattened airport where they hoped against all odds a plane might come and take them home.
Irma damaged or destroyed nearly three quarters of the homes in St. Maarten, a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands that lies in a chain of Caribbean islands ravaged by the hurricane’s march toward Florida. The airport was devastated and unreachable. St. Martin, a French territory that covers the small island’s northern half, fared no better.
Such was the ruin Poe witnessed through the fifth-story window of the resort when daylight broke on Thursday.
The lobby of the Sonesta resort in St. Maarten after Hurricane Irma. (Courtesy of Brian Poe).
“There was one point I thought I was gone — me and my wife were gone,” Poe told The Washington Post, his recollections occasionally interrupted by long silences when memories got the better of him.
The Poes weren’t dead, but they were in trouble. Irma appeared to have wiped out the island’s entire infrastructure. The State Department warned U.S. citizens trapped there all ports were closed; there was no consulate; and anyone in trouble should simply try 911.
The prime minister of St. Maarten had last updated his website before the storm hit, and signed off: “God be with all of us.”
[h=1]‘I thought I was gone:’ What it’s like to be rescued from Hurricane Irma by U.S. airmen[/h]
Damage as of Thursday in Orient Bay on the French Caribbean island of St. Martin, after the passage of Hurricane Irma. (Lionel Chamoiseau/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Wednesday evening found Brian Poe hunkered down in a commercial kitchen, which in some ways was not unusual, as he is a chef by trade. But this particular kitchen was nearly 2,000 miles from his home in Boston, at a resort on the island of St. Maarten.
Moreover, at that moment, the kitchen and Poe and 100-some other terrified guests were all in the eye of Hurricane Irma.
The kitchen was flooding, Poe recalled. The ballroom had already started to cave in. The resort’s general manager, suddenly transformed into a shepherd of terrified souls, used the eye’s brief calm to lead his flock to higher ground.
“He said, ‘We have to do this,’ ” Poe recalled. “Don’t stop moving.’ ”
They didn’t. Poe and his wife, who had been celebrating their anniversary, scrambled up the stairs of the howling, shaking, soaking Sonesta resort. One floor, then another. On the fifth floor, they paused and held on to whatever they could, as floors six and seven went into the sky.
For the next 48 hours, they’d keep moving — from one uncertain shelter to another, across an obliterated country, and finally to a half-flattened airport where they hoped against all odds a plane might come and take them home.
Irma damaged or destroyed nearly three quarters of the homes in St. Maarten, a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands that lies in a chain of Caribbean islands ravaged by the hurricane’s march toward Florida. The airport was devastated and unreachable. St. Martin, a French territory that covers the small island’s northern half, fared no better.
Such was the ruin Poe witnessed through the fifth-story window of the resort when daylight broke on Thursday.
The lobby of the Sonesta resort in St. Maarten after Hurricane Irma. (Courtesy of Brian Poe).
“There was one point I thought I was gone — me and my wife were gone,” Poe told The Washington Post, his recollections occasionally interrupted by long silences when memories got the better of him.
The Poes weren’t dead, but they were in trouble. Irma appeared to have wiped out the island’s entire infrastructure. The State Department warned U.S. citizens trapped there all ports were closed; there was no consulate; and anyone in trouble should simply try 911.
The prime minister of St. Maarten had last updated his website before the storm hit, and signed off: “God be with all of us.”
