Monday, September 18, 2017 (and the following week/months) was one of the most life defining moments I think I will ever have, but let’s back up. So obviously this post has been really delayed and it will be really long but it has definitely taken me this long to be able to know I could sit down and type it while keeping it clean. I have told the story out loud to my friends and family countless times and every time it gives me chills. Even typing this I have chills. It’s crazy to look back on something and have the realization of how bad things could have been and just how lucky you were.
Now for some hurricane season context - TS Harvey (which would later be a Category 4 storm when it devastated the coast of my home state of Texas) had already passed by us at the end of my previous semester. Hurricane Irma was a massive, record-breaking monster that missed Dominica and wiped out islands to the north of us before hitting Florida (first time in history the US was hit by 2 Category 4 storms in a season). Hurricane Jose forms, but it is going to miss us.
The tenth-most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Maria was the thirteenth named storm, seventh consecutive hurricane, fourth major hurricane, and the second Category 5 hurricane of the hyperactive 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Maria was the third consecutive major hurricane to threaten the Leeward Islands in two weeks. Let that sink in, hurricanes had been a looming threat.
Around September 13th, my friends and I were planning to go on a Night Dive after Mini 1 and I was going to start my Advanced Open Water Certification - super stoked because this Mini was a huge concern. Man, who knew how much that was going to change.
Now, in case you don’t know me, I’m SUPER paranoid about storms - probably because I grew up in Texas and tornadoes are beautiful and terrifying at the same time and they pop up out of nowhere - so I check the weather constantly.
So around the 14th, my friends and I are aware of an Invest - a weather disturbance of interest for further development - to the SE of us that is predicted to become more organized so we decide to move our night dive to Thursday instead of Tuesday. The NHC puts out regular updates on serious storms that they are monitoring but right now this system doesn’t even have an official name, it’s Tropical Depression 15. Whatever, I’m already checking it constantly. My friends Jesse and Erin are finally going to be arriving back to Dominica because the crazy hurricane season has made flights be cancelled constantly and they still aren’t back. I remember texting Jesse at one point something like “we are going to get hit by a hurricane dude, gotta storm prep when you get back.” So we did. Remember, paranoid? So we have over-prepped for this storm but “better safe than sorry” has always been a thing for me.
September 16th - Tropical Storm Watch is issued at 1400 and they are predicting a storm “near hurricane strength” when it will approach us on Monday that “could be a tropical storm or hurricane by that time” (I’m looking at the advisory now and it’s making me laugh). 2300 Watch says it will be a hurricane and the system has become Tropical Storm Maria. I think at this point of time Category 2 was the prediction. Just some medical student context, this whole time I’m studying constantly and I’m mainly concerned with if we will still have the exam Tuesday. No joke, we even had SGA send an email asking that.
September 17th - 0500 Hurricane Watch has been issued, predicting strengthening as well as slowing of the TS. 1100 update has a Hurricane Warning that has been issued for Maria which is still a TS around 370 miles E-SE of Dominica. Stats at this time: moving W-NW at 15 MPH with max sustained winds of 65 MPH and TS winds extending out 70 miles from the center with expected strengthening over the next 48 hours, but it should hit us Monday night. Predicted rainfall of 8-10 inches. School is cancelled for Monday.
September 18th- By 1100, Maria has become a Category 2 Hurricane (winds 110 MPH, moving at 12 MPH) and they are predicting rapid strengthening over the next several hours...Crap. School is so going to be cancelled. My friends and I are preparing to stay at my/Jesse’s apartments because all the walls are concrete and there are no windows in our bedrooms. Best decision we made. The path prediction is changing between going north, south, or hitting us dead on. Weather apps are predicting we will be hit by a Category 4 storm (insert all the swear words here). Officially glad that I am super paranoid. There is no way we will have an exam Tuesday and there is no way I can study now - gosh why are my priorities so out of whack? Also, in a massive group message with my family giving them regular updates on what is going on where I am.
Calm before the storm has a whole new meaning.
So Erin, Mariam, and I are basically sitting in the apartment passing the time watching Season 8 of Archer while I constantly refresh 3 different weather apps as well as the NHC page. We lost power around 1800 but the generator kicked in. It’s windy, but I’ve been through worse in Texas Thunderstorms, but I know it’s going to get real. I don’t remember when internet went out because I had cell phone service.
1945 September 18, 2017 - most terrifying moment of my life (I just sent severe chills down my spine thinking about it). I pull up the NHC website 15 minutes early, gut feeling for some reason. I see the most terrifying words - Maria is a Category 5 Hurricane and heading straight for us (Wind-speed 160 MPH when it made landfall). I remember jumping up from the bed and screaming my favorite swear word and then this calm, collected feeling washes over me. In my head, “Get it together, Heather. It’s about to be exactly what you were worried about was going to happen. Priorities.” I call my mom and Marshall and say something like “this is going to be bad, I know we are going to lose contact for a long time and there is no way we won’t be evacuated. I’m going to be okay. I love you.” Surreal feeling kicks in here because I know this could actually be the last time I talk to them.
Keep in mind, POWER is OUT! Most of my friends went through the night not knowing that the hurricane was this dangerous. The last update I get is the 2100 update from the NHC saying the eye-wall is hitting the southern coast by Roseau. Cell phone towers go down 3 minutes after I send this screenshot to my family. We are cut off from the outside world until we get evacuated basically.
That night was intense. We could feel the storm approaching, crazy drop in pressure. Terrible headache (similar to my migraines), screaming winds for 6+ hours, and it is DARK. So incredibly dark. Around 0100, Jesse starts banging on the wall (our bedrooms share a wall). I think something is wrong (he just wanted to be sure we were okay), so I get up and step into my living room. I’m standing in around 1 inch of water and I realize I could have just been electrocuted since the generator is still on and my refrigerator is running. Well I need to turn that off and clean up all this water. This water was blown into my apartment around the door frame through tiny 1/8″ cracks. That’s insane, this room is like 25′-30′ x 10′. I can’t sleep, so I lay in my bed and listen to Maria rage outside. I can hear metal and who knows what else scraping across my ceiling. I’m just waiting for daylight at this point. I hear everything stop and I’m so confused how we went though what has to be the eye of the storm (makes sense once I saw the path the storm actually took).
Walking outside the next day, it looked like a bomb went off. That’s the only way I know how to explain it. All the trees are defoliated. Power lines are down everywhere. There’s evident landslides on the mountain behind my apartment. The pictures I took don’t come close to doing justice to the havoc that was wrecked on my beautiful home for the last year. And this is just the start of the situation because now we are going to have to be evacuated which is another really long story.
Insert all the widespread panic among the students. No power, if you didn’t storm prep adequately then no food or water. I feel like I’ve spent my entire life preparing for the Apocalypse (paranoid, remember?), so even though this is not okay, everything will be okay. I feel awful for the residents of Dominica, we are going to get to leave but they are stuck here, forced to rebuild.
We have ample food and water with my group of friends. We are sleeping 5 people in my small apartment and Jesse and I aren’t sleeping at night because we are concerned the place will get broken into - and it was a very justified concern one night - but it was reality for a week. Sometimes you live through the worse case scenario and it pays to be prepared for it because you never know when it will happen.
Admin cannot even get to campus the first day post-storm, so the process of check-in is student run. Who knows where the SAT phones are. EMS guys worked I think 4 days non-stop. Day 2 Admin walks into campus and Dean White tells us the island has been devastated, as we had all assumed and that our families are all in a panic. Rightly so. We are doing search and rescue to account for all students/faculty (no fatalities, one of those blessings). Day 3 Adtalem has sent in the professional evac team. I think this was also the day we got water back running but it is not safe to drink. Evac order is done as high priority persons, families with children, single females, single males, couples. We have numbers for our order, I was 500-something, Erin was 300-something but we are being evacuated on the same boat. Several students are being taken on ferries - a 12 hour trip to St. Lucia. I get so sea sick it’s not funny so this is a concerning idea but it’s basically the only option because I can’t afford to be flown out by the state department. Friday, officials have decided they d not think it is safe for us to stay off campus anymore and they want all remaining students to move to the student center. Shops in Picard are getting broken into in broad daylight. We thought we would get to leave Friday but the cruise ship doesn’t show, same thing happens Saturday. I don’t remember which night, but one of those nights there are around 300 of us waiting at the pier at 2000 in the dark, no secured perimeter, waiting for a ship that isn’t coming. Finally we get to leave Sunday. We are going very slow down the coast of Dominica and you can see the damage. We get cell phone service and are able to call home.
I was able to call my sister Julie on her birthday and tell her Happy Birthday.
We get to St. Lucia and a group of like 20-30 of us are taken to this sketchy Hostel where we wait until 1800 to go to the airport. We are then flown to Miami, landing around 0200. Erin and I get on the 0545 flight to Dallas on September 26th.
I really don’t know how to finish this, because that is not the end of the story. I’m currently in medical school on a Ferry off the coast of St. Kitts and my school is relocating to Knoxville, TN for the January 2018 semester.
“Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you” - This was the motivational quote I started telling myself back in August and it’s gotten me through until now. Sometimes you just have to learn to let go because you can’t control everything.
