I had two young children and was living in the Glynn area at the time. I was familiar with hurricanes from growing up in the Dominican Republic and I was going to just stay in my house.
There was this guy, I was nailing up hurricane strapping, maybe six hours before the storm hit, and this guy walks by who I didn’t really know but who was always very pleasant. He said to me, you don’t need to stay in this house. You need to come by my house. I was like, I’m not going to go stay at a strange man’s house. So a few hours later, he came by again and said "look, I know you don’t know me and maybe I look a bit like a bum to you, but I do a little roof work and carpentry and you should not stay in this house."
He started to pick up stuff off my porch, and I said, to him, hey, don’t touch my stuff. I don’t know you, and you look like maybe you’re high or something. I think I should stay here. But something, almost like a voice was saying I should listen to this man.
We were putting hurricane strapping on the side of the house to help hold the roof down, but they wouldn’t stay attached to the wall.
So here is the thing: Like around six or seven that evening, the wind was up, trying to do its business, and this guy came back again and said "look, I don’t know what I’ve got to say, maybe tell you I know Jesus personally or something, but I’m saying to you I am not going to trouble you or harass you, but I am not comfortable with you staying here in this house with children."
So we decided to go up the hill to his place. His house wasn’t finished. You could be in it but it wasn’t done. But his roof was done well and it was very solid and secure and we ended up spending that entire night and part of the next day just surviving Hugo.
Almost every house around was destroyed except his. He lost two little panes, not even a whole window. We put boards against it and the wind would push so it fell like we were on a hovercraft. There was water everywhere. We watched little cyclones or tornados form all over the place. He had some type of – not glass, but not Plexiglas – that didn’t break. Pieces of galvanized hit it and it didn’t break or come off. It was kind of surreal.
I pray a lot anyway and so I prayed. Everybody has their own way of not showing fear in front of children. Most of the time, we had no candles or light because there was too much wind. It was pounding. It was howling that whole night and we’d hear voices, you couldn’t tell sometimes if it was the wind or people.
We watched a couple people running outside. I don’t think they consciously wanted to go out, I think their home fell apart. We saw them running and getting knocked about by flying sheets of galvanized.
We saw little mini tornadoes spinning, going west from Glynn toward, I think Mon Bijou, spinning all through the gut nearby. People’s septic tanks burst and the gut was like a cesspool. It was crazy, seeing all those trees, big strong trees bent over and snapped. Vehicles and objects, anything that could move was like a projectile. That was the most frightening part.
The men were all cool though or at least they acted like it was all cool.
It felt like forever but it was really like 12 hours of storm. We saw the eye come over us and it became calm. People went outside and some relaxed like it was over. But it didn’t feel like long until it passed and when the tail end of the storm hit, it was even worse, with more howling of the wind. We felt things crash around, hitting into walls. And we’d hear people screaming. That bothered me the most because we didn’t know where it was coming from and we couldn’t see or do anything.
It was like time stopped. Then, in the ‘morning,’ it had passed and going out, we could see the sky clearing in the north and a sickly dark in the south.
There was nothing green left anywhere. Every leaf of every tree was gone. That was when the reality set in that it was a pretty serious natural disaster
There were babies crying. People were looking for their elders who they couldn’t find. We had some elders in the neighborhood that crawled into their cisterns for shelter during the storm – not a great idea.
It was avocado season and avocados were all over the ground in Glynn. There were a lot of avocado and breadfruit and coconut trees there then. I saw big coconut trees just snapped in two – not even bent over, just snapped as they stood.
I don’t know why, with the power out, but a lot of the lines on the ground were live and crackling and sparking on the ground. Where we were, I don’t remember any FEMA or emergency management people coming out. It was like the second week after the storm at least before anyone came to where we were.
The people really were brought together after that, though, because nobody had anything, at least in that area. I don’t remember anyone with a generator near us.
So there was a whole big issue of people helping each other out, building fires to boil and purify water to drink and wash.
Clothes and trash were all over the street, along with big piles of debris. Parts of homes, crumpled galvanized, broken panes of glass, garage doors, framing lumber, light bulbs, transformers, everything everywhere on the ground and the middle of the road. There was sewage and chemicals and everything else, so we were encouraging everyone to make sure the children didn’t touch anything.
But in the midst of all that, many neighbors who might not have known each other, everybody was talking to one another. Some people were cut up and hurt. I helped if anyone needed immediate assistance and we’d take them to what was like a M.A.S.H. unit. At first there was no way to get through, with poles down everywhere and cars smashed up in the road. And the gut by Glynn was a cesspool for over two weeks. The third week it dried and caked up. Those things are what struck me.
But what also stuck out to me was how everybody started working together. It is in times of disaster when people show their humanity, if you will. That is, if they have any of course. A couple of weeks later, going into town it was more hostile.
But on the 18th, after the storm, it was a totally different St. Croix. It is important for the younger people to hear about it so they take it seriously. We were prepared for a storm, but nothing like that. It was amazing the number of people who were hurt.
In that portion of Glynn almost everyone lost at least 75 to 80 percent of their homes, leaving just a room or maybe part of a bedroom. That was a serious eye opener.
When we went back to look at my house on the third or fourth day after the storm, the entire roof had collapsed. I had a rocking chair and the roof fell on it in a way that made it look like the rocking chair was holding the whole roof up. I’ve got a picture. And all the hurricane strapping we put on was gone.
Oh, that man I was talking about, the one who made me leave my house; that was Juan Robles, and from that moment on we were friends. He is like family now.
