My First Category 5 Hurricane

By Laura Jagielski

For the past 3 years I’ve been lucky enough to call the U.S. Virgin Islands my home. But this isn’t the first Caribbean island I’ve called home, or have had to prepare for a hurricane. I’ve lived in The Bahamas, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, and Grenada. And of all the named storms that have been predicted to come my way, Irma was the first to follow through with her threat.

Thursday, August 31, 2017, was the first day that my husband and I started to feel anxious. I remember my husband tossing and turning in bed, eventually whispering in my ear, “I think we need to provision for this hurricane tomorrow.” And with that, Friday, September 1, 2017, was the beginning of our experience with Hurricane Irma, the largest and most powerful storm have ever been recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.

So we did what you’re supposed to do for preparing for a hurricane: we bought dry goods, lots and lots of water, made sure we had enough dog food, batteries, flashlights and filled up our gas tanks.  We put up our hurricane shutters, secured our cars and then went to bed on Tuesday, September 5, knowing it would be our last good night of sleep.

Wednesday, September 6, started as a normal day, with me getting up and walking our two dogs, making coffee and checking email. Around 11 am the wind and rain intensified, and I set up our dog crates, popped open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and sat down and waited.

The noise was awful, hearing branches breaking and crashing into the side of the house, making your imagination run wild, thinking any minute a window will get blown out. I tried watching movies on my iPad, trying to drown out the noise and distract myself. Meanwhile my husband was pacing from room to room, refusing to sit down with me, and my two dogs were laying peacefully next to me, like we’re all just chilling on a normal lazy Saturday.

Around 3 pm I started walking around the house, placing trash cans where there were leaks, placing towels down, trying to stay busy. As I walked into the kitchen looking for any leaks, I notice water seeping in from the front door. I don’t think much of it, shrugging it off to the copious amounts of rain, and I wipe it up with paper towels. Within seconds, brown water is steadily flowing into our kitchen. I yell for my husband, as I start pulling up rugs and throwing chairs on top of our dining room table, a terrible sense of panic and fear begin to come over me.

Within minutes there was at least 6 inches of water in our kitchen. Thankfully the kitchen is about a foot and a half lower than the rest of the house. My husband quickly remembered that the sliding glass door off our kitchen opens up to a porch, so no matter what the water won’t be able to go any higher than the door, as he races over to it and opens the door, draining some of the water. I grab a bucket and start filling it up with the cold, brown water and dumping it into the kitchen sink; as it gives me something to do, knowing in the back of my head the water is still coming in … what is this really going to accomplish?

About 5 minutes goes by with me scooping up water and we decide we need to figure out a better solution in getting this water out of here. We crack open the front door and as the water is rushing inside, past us, we see that the drains are completely clogged with debris, causing our entire courtyard to flood. My brave husband decides to go outside to see what he can do about clearing the drains. I’m told to wait at the door and listen for his knock to let him back in.

I was raised Catholic and I don’t consider myself a very religious person, but the moment my husband disappears outside in the worse of the storm, I start repeating the “Our Father.” Fortunately he returns safely back inside. The water starts to retreat and a sense of relief comes over me. The water is gone. I start mopping what’s left, cleaning up the mud, leaves, sticks left behind.

As scary as that was, I think to myself, “well that killed about 1 ½ hours, we’re almost there!” Another 30 minutes pass and I’m walking around the house again, checking buckets and trash cans, wiping up water here and there, and it happens all over again. The brown, chilly water comes racing back into the kitchen, but this time we know what needs to be done. Round 2, my poor husband suits back up and goes back out into the storm to clear more debris from the drains.

As the storm comes to an end, we feel exhausted but relieved that it has passed. I even take my dogs out late that night to go to the bathroom, our first opportunity to see some of the damage. Even as I was stepping over trees, walking around down power lines, it still didn’t hit me. It still didn’t seem real that my house was 10 miles south of the eyewall of a Category 5 hurricane; and I’m OK, my dogs are OK, and my husband is OK.

The next day we woke up early, already to the sound of machetes cutting through trees. We got up, walked the dogs and could really see the damage left behind. My heart sank. There were no words to describe what I was seeing. Having never been through a hurricane, I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t this. THIS I wasn’t prepared for.

There wasn’t a single leaf left on a tree, a single palm frond not on the ground. It looked like a bomb went off, as if God took a weed whacker and just decided he hated nature. You could see miles and miles that you couldn’t see before – neighbors’ houses that you didn’t know were there now suddenly were sticking out like a sore thumb, with your neighbor’s roof scattered in pieces down the hill.

Now it wasn’t the government, federal or local, who helped the people of the Virgin Islands the first week. It was us – it was neighbors helping neighbors. It was neighbors using their chainsaws to cut down trees, remove telephone poles in an effort to clear the roads and help each other reconnect with friends and family.

The next several days were hard for us, testing not only our physical strength, but our mental strength. During this time, a strict curfew was in effect. You were only allowed on the roads from 12 pm to 6 pm. My husband would leave for hours at a time, with no way to communicate with him, trying to buy gas and various parts for the generator, check on friends, and check on his clients’ yachts. It was an eerie feeling, being stuck on a rock and living in what felt like a war zone.

It all felt very surreal, with U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and Black Hawks flying overhead, watching people loot local businesses, witnessing a man assaulting a woman for her groceries, garbage piling up, gas stations running out of fuel, long lines of people waiting to get MREs, tarps, and water for 2 hours and longer, etc. The mood was tense to say the least.  While my husband went on these missions to find more supplies, I stayed busy trying to wash clothes in buckets of cistern water, help my landlord clear more debris and listened to my battery operated hand-held radio for any news in regards to when help was coming.

But I also witnessed a lot of positive efforts and a coming togetherness. A pizza restaurant was handing out free cold drinks and letting anyone fill up a cooler of ice. People were taking in their neighbors who no longer had a roof over their head, and people were sharing meals together. You could almost forget where you were for a minute with a cold beer in your hand.

After a long discussion, my husband and I came to the hard decision that we needed to leave as soon as possible. We couldn’t work, we couldn’t make money without power, cell service and internet. We knew we could do more for our home and our friends off the island than if we stayed and took up precious resources.

We thankfully managed to find a way off the island before Hurricane Maria, another Category 5 storm was due. I’ll never forget the feeling of standing on the dock with my two dogs and husband, and seeing the boat and captain that were taking us off the island. I wrapped my arms around him, breaking into tears and sobbing, while muffled “thank you’s” came out. This was really happening, we were leaving and we were going to be OK.

Despite being happy to leave and getting to a safe place, I was still very sad and worried to leave St. Thomas and all of our friends. This was our HOME, we were building a life for ourselves here, and with 24 hours notice, I had obtained health certificates for my dogs, packed a duffle bag each for my husband and I, and locked up our rental house, still with many beloved items inside (wedding gifts, pictures, favorite sweatshirts, etc.) and jumped on a boat for another island.

We found one friend passing through Red Hook (the main town in the east end of St. Thomas) as we were boarding the boat and were able to get him onboard too. So the passenger list included 2 dogs, 2 cats, an 18-month-old, 4 adults, and our trusted crew.

My husband and I flew from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Atlanta on Monday, September 18. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday, September 20 as a Category 5 and left 3.5 million people without power and completely devastated. But our journey didn’t end in Atlanta. Due to the heat restrictions of flying with pets, we had to drive from Atlanta to Tampa (where we had family to be with). But for us, this nightmare began the night my husband was tossing and turning on Thursday, August 31.

What are some of the things I learned from surviving a Category 5 Hurricane, labeled as the strongest storm to have developed in the Atlantic?

1. Have a WORKING generator – Even though we had a generator, it wasn’t working properly before the storm. This meant my husband spending hours working on it and searching for extra parts in what stores weren’t damaged. This is vital in order to feel somewhat human in a very stressful and trying environment. Flushing toilets, taking a shower, doing dishes, charging your phone, even having a light on while you eat canned chicken and macaroni & cheese casserole for dinner, are all very important to keeping up morale.
2. You’ll want SPF protection – Hats, umbrellas, large sun shade tarps, sunscreen should all be on your hurricane list.  I couldn’t believe that there was no longer any shade. Not a single leaf offering protection. It was hot as soon as the sun came up and long into the night with no breeze. Many of the nights after the storm I spent sleeping on our tile, as we didn’t have battery operated fans or any way to cool ourselves.
3. Buy a satellite phone – We couldn’t communicate with our family for several days. In order to get cell service, we had to drive on treacherous roads (sometimes breaking curfew) for about 20-25 minutes and stand in a particular spot.
4. Have 2-way radios. Some of my most anxiety-filled moments were waiting for my husband to come back home from his supply runs; worried he’d been arrested for breaking curfew or injured while driving over the severely damaged roads Even if he went for a walk over to our neighbors, I couldn’t contact him. 
5. Buy a GOOD chainsaw. Machetes, or what I prefer to call them, “choppy chops,” affectionately picked up from a farmer in Bequia, a small island in The Grenadines, will cut trees down … but a chainsaw is priceless.

As beautiful as the Caribbean is, come summertime, the potential threat of natural disasters always looms over our heads. That being said, the storms won’t keep me away and I will return, #VIStrong.