September 20, 2017
We always hear about people getting stuck on an island during a storm and always wonder how they did not see it coming. Well my wife and I now fall into that category. We went down for a few days to see if there was any damage from Hurricane Irma. We left on Sunday morning September 17th. The night before I watched the weather and saw a tropical storm but figured it would miss and what would the odds be with Irma passing within 3 miles. We arrived Sunday afternoon went shopping and settled in Sunday night. Monday morning my neighbor was driving by he stopped and instead of the normal “welcome” I got “what are you doing here?” Then told me that Hurricane Maria was coming and it was going to be “bad”. I immediately went inside and my wife and I tried to book a flight out, no luck.
I went out and filled up our Jeep we keep there and filled up the rental car with gas. Luckily we got a propane delivery scheduled for the next day. I went to the Home Depot which was a mad house and got tape, rope, and tarps. Wasn’t enough time to board up windows so we just had to ride it out. Got some extra food which was already in short supply.
Tuesday night the storm started rolling around 9pm with power and the phones going out around 10pm. The next morning it more felt like a really bad storm vs a Hurricane but that was about to change. By late morning the street was covered with Avocados that were blown out of the trees. By early afternoon the wind was howling and debris was starting to fly down the street. As the day wore on the wind blew harder the the debris was getting bigger. Looking out the window at a 10×10′ section of roof in the street we saw it lift up and come directly at us like a bullet. My wife and I inside the house on the second floor both ducked and heard a load crash. We went downstairs and saw the section of roof suspended 3′ off the ground suspended against the house purely by the pressure of the wind.
6PM the storm peaked and hit directly against the completely exposed back of the house. The pressure of the wind forced water into any area possible. At one point we thought the French Doors were going to give way and decided to push tables, sofas and a bed against them.
The next morning was dead quite then we heard the best sound ever which was a single Coqui frog singing, the storm was over. We made out EXTREMELY well as besides paint damage and a bunch of landscape destroyed we really had no damage. Several neighbors lost roofs, windows were blown in and out and some houses were just completely destroyed. Getting gas was a nightmare, credit cards did not work and ALL communications were down. Despite all the problems neighbors were up early cleaning up and helping others. We never saw anyone from the town it was the neighborhood that took care of itself. It really was a site to behold. For the next week we cleaned up our place and helped other clean theirs. It took two trips but we were very fortunate to make it out a week later. Below I have shared some of the pictures we took in the aftermath.
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