Our provisions for 7 people what we thought would be a few days...it ended up being 13 days!
Waiting for the hurricane to come
Early in the day when the first winds knocked down an orange tree,
Emily, Kari, Christina and Mrs. Walker went to collect some fruit.
The winds started to blow and we watched with jaws open.
The tall skinny palm here ended up still standing after all was said and done--we named it "Ivan"
Mr. Walker's banana trees across the road from us were some of the first trees to fall.
Later, you'll see what they looked like after the storm.
Just hanging out, not realizing yet what this thing was going to do.
We ended up putting a mattress and chairs in front of these doors because the wind was blowing so strongly on them.
I later found out that someone with similar doors had had them blown open by the storm.
This shows the damage to Mr. Walker's banana trees.
Luckily these regrow and bear fruit within 7-8 months.
This is the neighbor's home who lost their entire roof during the storm--it just ripped off and is lying behind the house.
Estimates are that 90% of homes were damaged or destroyed.
This is just up the hill from Kari's house (our "safehouse")
On the road over to my house.
Notice the pine tree that's stripped completely on one side.
How did THIS thing survive?
The Peters lost the center section on their roof as well as the part over their veranda.
We had some flooding both upstairs (from the rain coming straight in) as well as downstairs in my apartment.
They lost the entire backside of their home.
This destruction is an all too common a sight.
The (once) beautiful Grand Etang Lake.
You previously could not see this from the road.
Destruction in the Grand Etang. It looks similar to the forest fire destruction I've seen in Colorado.
We stopped at the top of the Grand Etang road and were happy to see a monkey.
He was apparently happy to see us as well and went looking for food in our bus!
As we got closer to St. George's (where the damage was really bad),
we saw concrete homes destroyed whereas in our area,
it was mostly the board houses that got completely devastated.
So much destruction...
This was a church--we saw a lot of buildings that took a similar hit.
The national stadium