At this point, the hotel staff is no longer in control of the gymnasium. Military personnel (yes, guys with semi-automatic rifles) and "Civil Protection" (I think it was a combination of Civil Protection and the police) were going through the gym letting people know that we needed to get in line to get on a bus to be taken to another shelter. So Amanda and I got in line and waited. We had gathered our bags, the blanket and pillows, and I also carried an additional mat that Amanda could use to hopefully be more comfortable at the next shelter. Well, as we got to the front of the line, the people trying to control this fiasco said that we needed to leave the blankets, mats, and pillows behind. We put the pillows and mat with the rest of the discarded items by the door (I convinced them to let us keep the blanket because Amanda was pregnant...right before we left, they said we could take the pillows too but we couldn't find them before we were sent out into the hurricane). In hindsight, we should have taken the time to find those pillows because where we were going didn't have anything for us to sleep on. More on that later.
So, we're at the front of the line to get on the bus...which means we have to go out in the peak of this hurricane to get there! They had a path to the bus lined on either side by military personnel in rain ponchos. As we headed toward the bus, the people lining the path made sure we kept our footing, but at the same time kept pushing us forward to get on the bus. We were on the bus with about 40 other people and in that strong wind, that bus was just rockin' back and forth. Once the bus was loaded, we headed out but it didn't take long to run into a spot of minor trouble. A tree had fallen across the road that the bus driver wanted to take, so we had to back up, turn around, and go another way. From a meteorologist's standpoint it was fascinating being out in the middle of a category 3 hurricane. From a safety standpoint, being on the road was about the worst place for us to be. Thankfully, we weren't on the road for too long. Numerous trees had been pushed over...many of those were large trees with trunk diameters greater than 10 inches. The heavy rain had led to widespread street flooding with about a foot to foot and a half of water covering most roads. Here's a few pictures of what we saw while we were in the bus:
Our first stop was at a school that was apparently already full of evacuees. We sat in the bus for about 20 minutes while the Civil Protection people decided where to take us. They finally made their decision and we headed to a second school. This school was empty, so they had to take a few minutes to make sure it was safe enough for us to stay in. We got "okay" to exit the bus and head to one of three classrooms on the second floor. The classrooms were just that...classrooms with desks and a few tables. No mats, no blankets, no pillows. The rooms were also wet because the windows were not windows in the sense that they did not have any glass (which in one respect, that was actually a good thing). They were nothing more than wooden blinds that could either be open or closed. When they were open, they were open. When they were closed, they were still kind of open...which is why the rooms were wet. Here is a picture of one of the classrooms taken several days after we stayed in it:
It was now late Friday afternoon and the rooms had to be prepared quickly because it would be getting dark soon. There was a custodian at the school and he was the only person there besides the 80 or so evacuees. He had a squeegee for us to use and that was it. The Civil Protection people simply dropped us off and left. We had no idea if we were going to get food or water sent to us or not. At this point, we were pretty much on our own. One of our saving graces was on the first floor of the school, there was a small store with some snack foods and soda. That would end up being our food supply once we came to the conclusion that no one was coming back to bring us anything. Here is a picture of the store a few days after the storm:
While our fellow evacuees were preparing the classrooms on the second floor, I was looking at the store on the first floor as a possible place for Amanda and me to sleep thinking that maybe we could make it a little more comfortable for Amanda. So Amanda and I did our best to make it cozy putting flattened cardboard boxes down on the ground and putting our blanket on top of that. As the picture of the store shows, there was one wall of windows that we could close the blinds on, so we tried to stay away from that side of the room as the wind blew some rain into the room on that side. By the time we got things arranged, it was dark. We laid down to sleep for just a few minutes when one of the evacuees from upstairs came down to check on us. We told him we were doing fine, but as he left, Amanda and I saw the water level in the store increasing. There were these plastic tables (about 9 of them), so we made the quick decision to put all our stuff on the table to keep from getting soaking wet. We did it as quickly as we could using my cell phone as a source of light. We fashioned our bed on top of the tables and tried to go back to sleep. Now that we were higher off the floor, that meant we were also more open to getting wind and rain on us. Imagine someone dipping their fingers in water and flicking them on you while you're trying to sleep. That's exactly what it was like for us...so after about 10 minutes of being on the table, we decided we'd try moving the tables away from the open windows. When we got on top of the tables, the water in the room was just a thin layer. When I got back down to move the table (no more than 10 to 15 minutes), the water was up to my ankles! In light of this rising-water issue, Amanda and I again made a quick decision to abandon this room and go back up to the second floor. We gathered our belongings and headed to higher ground. We went back into the classroom, set up our blanket on the tile floor, and did our best to get some sleep. It was uncomfortable and difficult to sleep for me...so you can just imagine how difficult it would be for Amanda to try to sleep. Overall, it was about the worst night of sleep I've ever had...but things were going to get better for us the next day. That's where I will pick things up for the next installment. Stay tuned...
No comments:
Post a Comment