The aftermath of Ike

Osh sluicing himself down with fresh water out the tank after a cooly dip in the sea.

When we finally got word from Grand Turk it was from Daniel's Aunt on her cell phone up in Miami. The night Ike struck her father - Colin (to all intents and purposes Nicky's ex-step father-in-law...the relationships are complex here!) a lovely man, had been taken ill and was admitted to hospital with jaundice. He was discharged later that night as the roof of the hospital started to detach from the walls (not conducive to good medical care, as a rule) and they moved the 'walking wounded' out. Monday morning first thing he and Donna (his daughter) were air-lifted out to Miami. We learned that Colin was under going tests and that Grand Turk had indeed been devastated by Ike - we knew at this point that Daniel's mum had lost the roof to her house, Donna had lost the roof to her house, Daniel's grandmother (thank goodness) had retained the roof to her house and had a generator so all the family were now decamped to her place. Jay, Daniel's Mum's husband had lost his fishing boat (which he'd made a point of taking out of the water and moving to the leeward side of his house) which is his primary source of income. The cruise terminal had been destroyed - Donna makes her living selling jewellery at the cruise terminal. All in all things looked bleak: not only were there immediate problems in terms of comfort and housing, but potentially long term problems with income too. You can imagine that with no power on the islands and the upper stories of Scotia Bank gone (ie banks not in operation at this point) that cash was in very very short supply. The prospect of income not being there altogether can't have helped moral either.

For the rest of that week we spent hours on the phone trying to get hold of Martin, our friend who owns the Saltraker (a lovely old building on Grand Turk) to see if there was anything we could do. Martin (in Somerset) had little information and getting hold of Erika (the manager) was hard. All day we could hear DC10s taking off with relief supplies for Grand Turk (and South Caicos and Salt Cay which had been equally badly hit) and we had US Coast Guard helicopters flying over us delivering supplies. The airport was closed to everything but emergency aid traffic and Provo had gone into overdrive. We were inundated with texts giving us information on where to donate money and food, the supermarkets were collecting unwanted hurricane supplies, the biggest 'department store' on the island (for want of a better way to describe it!) was collected used plywood, CBMS the concrete provider were organising free shipment of packages to Grand Turk, there was not a generator to be had across Provo as people rushed to buy up what was left to ship to friends and relatives on the stricken islands. Commercial flights resumed on the Thursday and, having organised a generator (thank you Belinda!) he and Daniel left on the first flight to see what they could do to help family and friends at the Saltraker.

Life for us had returned to more or less normal on Provo: school started up finally on the Thursday (much to the relief of many parents!); the power was finally back on in Five Cays and Leeward (the poorest and richest neighbourhoods respectively) and everything was working as normal. Oisin and I flew to Grand Turk on Friday after school armed with food, lamps, water, money, crow bars, hammers and heavy duty work gloves. The scene of devastation on Grand Turk was breathtaking.

The original airport building - an old steel structure abandoned about 5 years ago - had completely collapsed in on itself; there was a small light aircraft with it's nose buried in the turf where the wind had tossed it like a toy; there were two cars on top of each other in the airport car park. Clearly, things had been far, far more violent here than in Provo. The drive into town revealed barely any telegraph poles standing - those that were strewn all over the roads were snapped in half. Some houses had lost just shingles, but many had no roof, their insides fully exposed to the world: possessions and the traces of homes on full public view (often, the roof goes then a wall collapses). There was not a single leaf left on any tree standing. Only the coconuts had managed to hang onto a few fronds but these looked very battered. The whole place looked like a deserted town, derelict after years of neglect. Tellingly, the old buildings had all survived with a bit of roof damage. It was the modern, new buildings that had suffered the worse. Unfortunately, Woodville, an old, old building that Colin was restoring (it had been in Daniel's family for a number of generations) did not fare well: the roof has mostly gone and many of the wooden walls have now lost their siding, leaving the building more exposed to the weather than it had been before.

We went to set up beds at Island House - all done by lamp light as dark by now then went to get fish and chips and a cold beer at the Turks Head (the only place on the island serving food and anything approaching a cold drink - courtesy of a generator). The following morning saw us breakfasting on the food I'd brought from Provo (the supermarket was closed on account of it having lost it's roof, a couple of small, small Haitian and Dominican shops were open, but with nothing really to sell) and then we set out to the Saltraker. The building had survived: it is around 200 years old, made of wood and has lived through a number of big hurricanes. Erika described how they were huddled in the upstairs corridor, breaking up furniture in the middle of the hurricane to fix windows as shutters were ripped off the outside and the glass gave way under the pressure. She said it was the most frightening experience she has ever been through and she described the whoomf, whoomf sound as the building LITERALLY flexed in and out as the pressure from the hurricane threatened to crush the place into match wood. Again and again, people have said it is a miracle that no-one died that night. The mess out the back of the Saltraker was astounding. Where there used to be a tin-roofed covered eating area, surrounded by huge mature trees and bougainvilleas was a dramatic tangle of dead branches, leaves, buckled tin sheets and tar. The roof had come off the kitchen (a building separate to the hotel itself), that roof was lodged in the one tree that remained standing and providing a background noise to the scene was the periodic clattering of a lone sheet of zinc bent over a branch way up in another tree in the other yard as it waved in the wind. Again, the place looked like it had been abandoned for years....

A big problem that people have had in Grand Turk is that they can't clear up until the insurance assessors have been to visit. There is clearly a huge demand for them at the moment and the rumours that they (mostly white folk from the US) didn't like flying backwards and forwards on small aircraft and weren't prepared to overnight with no ac, no ice, no tv, no internet connection didn't help morale any. Erika had been unable to do anything to the hotel itself, but we could set to work on the garden. The first job was to clear out the debris. Nicky had spent all day Thursday and Friday doing this, and we made another huge dent in it on Saturday. That afternoon Micky and Annie turned up (they'd been made homeless - when asked how her house had fared Annie replied " it no longer exists" - gulp!) to help along with Terry and Donna. Many hands make light work and by sundown we were all exhausted but had cleared much of the back yard. Osh was terrific, helping drag branches to the pile for the following day's bonfire and generally charming all the women with his winning ways. He'll be known for years to come as the little boy that came to help (the number of white folk coming from Provo to help was pitiful). His reward for being so good was lots of fun in the sea with Daniel's cousins (about his age) that evening. The disturbing news Saturday morning was that the Turks Head had been ordered to cease selling food and cold drinks. The man who has the lease is not the best-liked person on the island and proceeded to NOT cover himself in glory as the day went on. Apparently he'd decided that he didn't like the accounting in the bar by his bar manager (someone he's never got along with) so he shut the place down. On an island with very few generators, that one source of electric light, ice and a chance to wind down was a much needed haven and there were a lot of demoralised people around Saturday night.

Nicky lived on Grand Turk for a number of years and knows all the old haunts so we set out to find some food for us that night (more corned beef and tinned potato salad that we ate for lunch didn't appeal much). We chanced upon the Legal Begal, a Dominican bar serving hot food and cold beer - I went through the farcical situation of having to yell at the girl behind the bar about what we wanted because they had the music at full volume on account of a) the generator outside (very noisy) and b) they are Dominicans and don't know how to do anything quietly. Had there been others in the bar, I'd've understood her reluctance to turn the volume down, but there was no-one in there. So what could have taken 2 minutes took 5 on account of the deafening noise [note to self: maybe I should write the order down rather than try and shout?]. Waiting for the food outside we chatted to Frances, an elderly Haitian woman living in a garden shed (although I've seen better garden sheds, to be honest) behind the restaurant. Most of her belongings were outside drying, one wall of the shed was, erm, not there and she was still paying $150 a month for the privilege of living there...Dinner that night, eaten watching the sun go down from the trashed terrace of Island House was wolfed down and we collapsed exhausted in bed at 8.30 (what else do you do with no light?!?).

Sunday was more of the same: a bonfire to burn the rubbish (the dump was closed and reportedly the gates piled high with garbage as folk tried to keep the rats away from their houses with the mounting piles of steaming food scraps) and taking apart the kitchen roof so it could be burned. Every 20 minutes or so Nicky took a refreshing dip in the sea followed by a sluice down with fresh water from the tank. Access to water, per se, is not an issue there. Access to clean water is a whole other matter. Most of the water tanks are contaminated with plant debris - fine for bathing in but you'd not want to drink or cook with the stuff (which under normal circumstances is what people do because normally the tanks are clean). Osh and I spent most of the day building lego things in the shade (it was very very hot), dreaming of ice and fans and sluicing ourselves with water from the tank (which was refreshingly cool).

The Red Cross were doing the rounds on Sunday dishing out mosquito nets and water purification tablets and we took the opportunity to check out 'tent city' which is being set up for the est. 500 homeless. It is a grim affair (mind you, I suppose refugee camps are never anything but grim...and this is effectively what it is) with a large clear walled tent set up in a barren plot of land. Blue Loos has been asked to provide toilets for the sites on Grand Turk (two, reportedly one for TIs and the other for 'foreigners'), South Caicos and Salt Cay.

A telling note about all this: when we got home on Sunday night I took Osh into the bathroom to clean his teeth and he said "isn't electricity great Mim, you can turn on a light and flush the loo and have ice too"...