Hurricane Ravaged Dominica: "It"s All Gone" And Fighting For Survival

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

In just the blink of an eye, island life on Dominica was turned upside down.  Like Puerto Rico, Dominica was violently ravaged by Hurricane Maria, and residents are still fighting for survival.

The wooden frames and scattered, water-damaged belongings are all that remains of some homes of on Dominica, which was ravaged by Hurricane Maria last month.

Without warning, the storm rapidly accelerated from a Category 3 to a Category 5, and residents said they could do little to prepare.

 “There was lightning, there was heavy rain…[it was like] the hurricane was in the house,”said Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit according to ABC News.

 

“We have lost everything that money can buy, and that is a fact.”

The roof of Roosevelt Skerrit’s house was blown away and its floors flooded. On the night Hurricane Maria hit, Skerrit took to Facebook to post updates including one that said, “I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding” and another that said, “The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God!” Later he posted, “I have been rescued.”

“You can still see the shock, the anxiety, the fear the trauma in the eyes and the expressions of people every day,” he told ABC’s Nightline.

 

“Their entire life investments, life’s savings, blown away.”

 

Another now displaced resident named Emmanuel Peter said he can still remember the roar of the hurricane-force winds.

 

 “It was just whistling, whistling,” he said. “I thought it would burst my eardrums.”

Puerto Rico was not the only island in Hurricane Maria’s path, and almost a month later, both islands still look like post-apocalyptic zones.  But the island with the highest death toll per capita was Dominica; a close-knit, mostly Christian nation that was left at the mercy of a hurricane that shared a name with the mother of Christ: Maria.  

To date, 26 people are confirmed dead, 31 are still missing, and more than 50,000 people are displaced on the island that has a total population of roughly 74,000.

When  ABC’s Nightline visited Dominica six days after the storm, the only way to reach its interior was with the United States military. Upon arrival, many who had the option to evacuate the island were already in the process of doing so, including 1,300 students at Ross University Medical School, an American college based in Dominica.

“I do feel sadness for the people of Dominica,” said Carey James, the college’s associate dean of operations, analysis, and admissions. “My wife’s family is from Dominica … and it’s hard to see a place that you love go through that kind of a storm.” And nearly four weeks after the storm, people are still fighting to survive.

No one on the island has access to running, drinkable water, and with sewage systems destroyed, residents are contending with fears of diarrhea, dehydration, and dysentery. Much of the island still remains without power. For the vast majority of Dominicans, the choice to leave their home country isn’t financially available. More than 85 percent of houses have been damaged, and of those, more than a quarter simply do not exist anymore, leaving many of the residents homeless.

"I Don't Have Anything To Start Over" - Harvey Victims Pray For Relief As 1000s Remain Stuck In Shelters

It’s been nearly a month since Hurricane Harvey, a storm that some expect to rank among the costliest natural disasters in US history, and still tens of thousands of Texans remain marooned in temporary housing, unable to return to their flood-damaged homes, while thousands more are struggling to secure hotel rooms and other types of temporary housing, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The scramble for housing has caused occupancy rates at hotels in the Houston area to surge as disaster recovery officials scramble to arrange short-term and permanent housing for those left homeless by the storm. The task of securing shelter for the displaced could take months.

“Lillian Godfrey has been sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of her friend’s shuttered night club, alongside her daughter and two pool tables, ever since floodwaters swept into her home here last month.

Ms. Godfrey, 74 years old, has a federal voucher for a hotel, but hasn’t had any luck finding a room nearby. Her daughter’s cars were lost in the flooding.

“’It’s heartbreaking,’ she said. “The Lord closes some doors and opens others. He’s going to pull me through this sooner or later.’”

As recently as Saturday night, 4,700 people remained in Red Cross shelters across Texas on Saturday night, according to the relief group. Initially as many as 450,000 Texans were displaced by the storm, while as many as 30,000 sought temporary relief in one of the state’s shelters.

Some of the displaced, uneasy with the prospect of living elsewhere, have remained in their water-damaged homes. Others were staying with friends, family or even strangers.

For the first full week of September, hotel occupancy in Houston grew to 80.5%, nearly double the occupancy rate from the same period a year earlier, according to STR Inc., a data company that tracks the hotel industry.

It is still unclear how many people in Texas will lose their homes because of the storm or how many eventually will be able to move back. But some estimates expect the total damages to property and the US economy in terms of lost productivity could tally as high as $190 billion.

“While the final scope and scale of the housing challenge is still being realized, it is already apparent that this will be one of the largest, most complex efforts ever undertaken,” said Michael Byrne, who is heading up relief efforts in Texas for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

According to data collected by WSJ from the state, city and county level, some estimated 50,712 homes suffered major damage in the storm. Meanwhile, 14,952 were destroyed and 76,364 experienced minor damage.

Local officials say 130,000 single-family homes in Harris County, which includes Houston, were estimated to have been affected by the rampant flooding. Between 2,000 and 3,000 large apartment buildings likely sustained damage, and up to 5,000 smaller apartment buildings may have been damaged as well.

“In terms of the sheer destruction due to the flooding, this is unprecedented in modern times for Houston,” said Tom McCasland, Houston’s director of housing and community development."

In some towns, the flooding remains so dire that even locations that were initially planned to be shelters flooded, forcing officials to convert public buildings like schools into back up shelters.  

“In Port Arthur, a coastal city of about 55,000, Mayor Derrick Freeman called the housing situation “dire” in the wake of heavy flooding damage.

This past week, one shelter at a middle school was full after the city’s main shelter had flooded weeks earlier, and some 250 people had been evicted from their homes by landlords because of flood damage, according to Mr. Freeman.

Another several hundred were being housed at shelters around the state, and between 4,000 and 5,000 people were still living in flood-damaged homes, Mr. Freeman said.”

In Port Arthur, city officials had hoped to temporarily house some of the displaced on two barges that a private company was going to transport from nearby Louisiana. However, by Friday, plans had shifted, and large air-conditioned tents were brought in by FEMA and the state to house the evacuees who had been sheltering at the school.

Meanwhile, many victims who were given hotel vouchers by FEMA are finding it difficult to secure rooms thanks to sky high occupancy rates.

“Debby Valsin, a 54-year-old retiree, had been living at the middle school shelter in Port Arthur with her nine-year-old grandson. She said her landlord terminated her lease after the floods because her apartment was uninhabitable, giving her five days to haul out her belongings.

Ms. Valsin qualifies for a FEMA hotel voucher but said all the nearby hotels she called are full. For now, with the start of school Monday, Ms. Valsin expected to be moved from the shelter into the tents.

‘Your life is upside down,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything to start over.’”

However, while the situation remains incredibly dire for people on the ground, there may at least be a silver lining in the unprecedented damage brought by the storm – for auto manufacturers, that is.

As we reported last month, while terrible news to car dealers - many of whom face bankruptcy if their insurance policies don"t cover all the damages – the storm may be just what the struggling U.S. OEM and supplier industry ordered, according to a RBC.

That is, if locals have any resources left over to purchase new vehicles after their finished covering any out-of-pocket costs, which, despite President Donald Trump signing an aid package worth $15 billion.
 

Surveying Irma's Caribbean Devastation: "It Was End-Of-World Times...People Are Roaming Like Zombies"

As much of Florida is left flooded and without power from this weekend"s hurricane, the damage across much of the Caribbean goes well beyond water damage and downed power lines with many describing the devastation left by Irma as "end-of-the-world times."  As one resident of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands told the Washington Post, "it was beyond rough times, it was end-of-the-world times...everything normal to us has been destroyed."

On St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, “people there are roaming like zombies,” said Stacey Alvarado, a bar owner who managed to leave for the mainland. Her husband, who is still there, told her Sunday that residents and tourists are in shock. “They don’t know what to do. The island was wiped out. It’s like the walking dead down there.” Other islanders sent social media messages pleading for help, decrying looting and a series of armed burglaries.

“We need help,” wrote St. John blogger Jenn Manes. “We need the United States government to step up. We need military. We need security.”

Lauren Boquette, a 48-year-old restaurant manager on St. John, said his family had barricaded themselves in the bathroom of their home. When they emerged, he said, they saw a scene of total destruction.

“It was beyond rough times, it was end-of-the-world times. Everything normal to us has been destroyed,” he said.

Some of the hardest-hit places were those in the Leeward Islands like St. Martin and St. Barts,
where 11 people have reportedly died.

Meanwhile, aerial videos surfacing from the British Virgin Islands reveal just how extensive the damage across much of the Caribbean was.

As Irma hits Florida, don’t forget the horrific damage it has inflicted on the Caribbean pic.twitter.com/FvpOq9es4g

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) September 11, 2017

Aerial Video Shows Catastrophic Damage Across the British and US Virgin Islands Following #HurricaneIrma #Irma #HurricaneIrma2017 pic.twitter.com/VAJcfRyoKS

— Weather Network US (@TheWeatherNetUS) September 9, 2017

But it wasn"t just the Leeward Islands that were devastated by Irma as the entire island of Cuba has reportedly been left without power and the AP is reporting that 39 buildings have collapsed in a single city.

In Cuba, where the government said it had evacuated 1 million residents, Hurricane Irma’s driving winds and pelting rains sent roofs flying, knocked over trees, wrecked building and caused large-scale flooding along the northern coast. Officials in Havana warned of flooding that would last through Monday. In the city of Santa Clara, the Associated Press reported that 39 buildings had collapsed.

As streets turned into rivers, authorities took to inflatable rafts to access coastal neighborhoods. Some Cubans had even sought shelter in caves. The brutal storm struck Cuba along a coast studded with resorts that are among the pillars of the island’s economy. Authorities warned of heavy damage from the storm, which has killed at least 25 people across the Caribbean.

“The hardest-hit provinces are Camaguey, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus and to some extent Matanzas, the resort area of Varadero, which was directly in the path of the hurricane and where all the tourists were evacuated,” Richard Paterson, the CARE organization’s representative in Cuba, said by phone from Havana.

“Power has been turned off throughout the city, in fact, throughout the country,” he said. “The electricity infrastructure received extensive serious damage.”

Meanwhile, you know it"s a serious storm when even billionaires like Richard Branson can"t build structures strong enough to survive.

Billionaire Richard Branson shared footage of the damage to his home in the British Virgin Islands after Hurricane Irma pic.twitter.com/IFtIIgvbgF

— CNN International (@cnni) September 11, 2017

Live Stream From St. Martin As Hurricane Irma Barrels Overhead

This morning we reported that the small Caribbean island of St. Martin has been one of the first casualties of the "monstrous" Hurricane Irma, after the French government said that the four "most solid" buildings on the Caribbean island were destroyed by Irma.

French interior minister Gerard Collomb told reporters said that "the four most solid buildings on the island have been destroyed which means that more rustic structures have probably been completely or partially destroyed." The French government also said that there are electrical blackouts and widespread flooding on the islands of St Barthélemy and St Martin.

Now, to get a sense of just how powerful this storm is, here is a live feed from St. Martin showing "devastating images" as Hurricane Irma barrels overhead with maximum sustained winds of over 185 mph.