I don't know why I've waited eighteen years to finally talk about that fateful
day in September 1995.Having lived on Sint Maarten for the 5 years prior to and
eighteen days after the arrival of Luis I can honestly say the best and worst
times of my life occurred in SXM. To Wendell of a prior post, be grateful you
were not at Monte Vista during Luis. I was, and would have given anything not to be. Those red roof tiles your were talking about became terracotta missiles. One went thru the passenger side 0f my car and out the driver side without breaking, It just left a perfect impression of it's shape. I, like many other people, I suppose, had never experienced a hurricane and actually felt some excitement as this monster approached. It didn't take long for the excitement to turn to sheer horror. I sat on my balcony, which faced towards that area between St. Barts and Saba, and watched as the skies steadily turned from gray to a god awful yellow orange. At that point in time we were getting the tropical storm force winds which steadily got stronger and stronger. When the hurricane force winds started it was not long after that my world started coming apart. My "hurricane proof" house started to disappear one piece at a time. Myself, and about eight other residents started to house hop to find safer shelter. All of us ended up at one house in one bedroom of the one house that was the least exposed to the wind. We stayed in that room for nine hours praying that that house would stay together. Luckily it did. Over the next thirteen days strangers became friends, and friends became a family. I don't need to describe the aftermath of Luis as its been done enough. I would like anyone who reads this and can help me with something that's been troubling me for the last eighteen years. It was reported that the official death toll from Luis was seventeen people. I'm curious as to what an official death is. Because unless we're talking about a different hurricane, that death toll number is a joke. I watched Dutch divers pull more than seventeen people out of boats in simpson bay. What about the thirty or more bodies that were found in the shanty town above the salt pond. I guess your not dead unless your official.

I was on a small sailboat (34 feet) in the lagoon during hurricane Luis with my then-boyfriend and puppy. There were over 1,400 boats in the lagoon the day before the hurricane hit; there were 28 left floating after it passed. I know because my boat wasn't one of them but we got in our (thankfully undamaged) dinghy and went all around the lagoon, trying to find our friends and family and to see what kind of shape the island was in. Even now, 18 years on, my mind can't process the level of devastation. Our boat was run aground at the height of the storm (we were moored in Mullet Pond) - the same story as happened to most of the damaged and destroyed boats - other boats with inadequate storm moorage dragged onto us. We had more than enough anchors down to hold us securely, but not enough to hold us and 3 other boats. They ran over our anchors, one by one, until we were left on our last and smallest anchor, a 35lb Britannia. As our boat was ferro-cement and 13 tons, that just wasn't going to do it and we carved a furrow a metre wide and deep and almost 40 feet long in the volcanic rock of the shore, right off the 13th hole of Mullet Bay golf course. We had already packed a large waterproof barrel and a backpack with food, blankets, shoes and clothes, as well as money and our passport, after listening to the VHF for the first part of the storm, right up until the eye passed over us. just before it passed over us, we heard a lady screaming on the VHF for help, that her husband had gone out to check the lines and hadn't come back, that there was a big group of boats coming towards them and it was just her and her baby. At this point in the storm, the rigging was screaming like a woman, the rain was horizontal and hard enough to leave marks and the swell in the lagoon was short, choppy and 5 - 6 foot. You can't safely navigate a dinghy in that. She kept on screaming for help until suddenly she just wasn't. I have a baby of my own now and I try not to think about it. We never found out who or where she was or what happened to her. We turned the VHF off after that. When our boat ran aground, we only had a minute of warning; the pitching and yawing that had us bracing ourselves with our backs to the hull and our feet on the berths opposite for hours just stopped. for a minute it was just calm - we realized afterwards that was because we were dragging - and then the boat went over hard. We had run aground. We looked at each other, thinking, 'is this it? this is okay', when the boat suddenly lifted and slammed back down, like an otter trying to crack a shellfish on a stone. half a dozen of these slams and the hull breached - within seconds we were up to our waists in water. We grabbed our pack and barrel and I grabbed our 8 week old terrier pup and put him into a little backpack I wore on my front and we scrambled off the boat. We ran up the banking and down the other side; the wind was so strong it was hard to breathe (like sticking your head out of a speeding car's window) and the rain felt like pebbles. we ran as fast as we could but barely moved at walking speed. We hunkered down on the leeward side of the banking for a few minutes to get our breath back and figure out what to do next. 'The condos', my boyfriend said, pointing at the Mullet Bay timeshare condos on the other side of the golf course. I nodded and we ran for it. We were too terrified to feel anything - it was too much to process - the chainlink fence around the golf courts had come free on one side and was flapping madly like a giant flag. the green was under a metre of water in places, and as we were wading through one deep spot, out in the open and completely vulnerable, we saw a leaning palm tree uprooted and shot across the golf course like a javelin by what looked like a wall of wind and rain, almost like a mini-tornado. We finally made it to the closest condos; a tree had fallen across the little courtyard, completely blocking access to one of the ground floor condos and obstructing the other, so we went upstairs. My boyfriend got the door open and then we ran inside and pushed a dresser in front of it to keep it closed. the contrast of the noise of the storm to the calm of the room was shocking - i felt as though i had cotton wool in my ears because of the sudden quiet. I emptied our puppy out on to the bed from my little backpack. for a horrible moment he didn't move, just laid there curled up into a little black and brown furred ball, but then I stroked him and he responded, uncurling and whimpering, by scooching into me. My boyfriend went into the bathroom to see if it had windows (so we could hunker down there) and saw the water in the toilet bowl sloshing. He realized that an upper floor condo was not a safe choice right away. We grabbed everything and went out into the storm, back downstairs. He saw that the fallen tree had punched through the lower part of the door of one of the condos downstairs, so we got it open and hid in the bedroom for the rest of the storm. We hardly spoke all that night, just hid on the far side of the bed furthest away from the window, held each other and waited for it to pass. I remember that before the hurricane arrived, I was actually looking forward to it - I've always loved storms and powerful winds. Now I know better. I can tell you that no matter the official estimate of the death toll, it is way higher. I would be very surprised if it wasn't well into 3 figures; most of the boats in there had not checked in, having just arrived right before Luis. And so many of them were smashed beyond recognition, let alone repair or salvage. Most of them had people on them - for permanent cruisers, their boat is their life, for many all they have; they would not leave them. And they would have been fine if it weren't for the dozens of charter yachts that were left unmanned and undersecured by one of the biggest charter companies in the Caribbean. Those yachts were the ones who started the group drags - one dragging onto the other and then next and the next until you had a group of 10 or more boats smashing their way onto the shore, taking boat after boat with them. I heard there was a massive lawsuit after that, but frankly i'd be surprised if it were pursued - most yachties just don't have the means to pay for a protracted legal action, and that's without having to contend with losing everything you own. We were fortunate in that aside from the damage to the hull, our boat was intact and could be repaired, which we did ourselves. Too many people we knew were not. The devastation around the lagoon and on land was too much to fathom - there was a sportfisher right next to the side of the road on the bend where Cole Bay turns into Simpson Bay. It was a good 60 feet at least from the normal edge of the lagoon. It was there for a couple of years, I think. Debris washed up on the shore for months and months afterwards. The waters of the lagoon were fetid in places, and in the 6 weeks it took us to repair our boat, 6 weeks of working thigh deep in water (constantly pumping, trying to stop stagnation), both of us got some pretty nasty staph infections from it. The day after, when we went around the lagoon looking for the people we loved, I remember sitting in Lagoonies in Cole Bay, and there were an elderly couple just sitting there, staring into nothing. They had lost everything, and almost each other. All they had were the still wet clothes on their backs. I felt ashamed that we had gotten off so lightly. A sort of survivor's guilt, I suppose. We didn't see any looting in the yachtie community or in Simpson Bay; only people trying to help each other the best they could with what little they had themselves. I pride myself in facing what I fear, but I try not to torment myself with these particular memories; as time goes on and I gain life experience it only makes my understanding of the hardship, devastation and loss greater and more painful. We were lucky - we survived and so did our boat, our home, and our family and friends. There are too many who can't say that.

Naomi,

Thank you for sharing what have to be some of the most painful memories you will hopefully ever have to bear. I can't imagine the strength and fortitude it must have taken to survive all that and to come through with the obvious care and concern you had for all about you. I can feel your pain still through your written words.

God bless and may you never again have to deal with something of that magnitude.

Respectfully,

pat



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2013 08:25PM by pat.

everyone has a story about Luis. It is difficult for me to read them. That storm left its scars on all of us.
I have a video of sailors trying to keep their boat afloat in the lagoon, which was like a raging sea rather than a lagoon.
I hope to God St Maarten never has a storm like that again.

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