Life on these islands is changing right now, right this second, she thinks. Maybe forever. St. John
After Inga left us—as definitively as someone leaving a room and slamming the door behind her—we picked up our heads and looked around.
Let’s start with Cruz Bay, our “downtown.” It was…ruined. Wharfside Village lost its roof; the Beach Bar’s dance floor was buried under two-foot drifts of sand; the palm trees along Frank Bay were snapped in half, reminding us of gruesomely broken bones. Someone’s boat, Nell, landed upside down on the deck of High Tide, where so many of us had enjoyed rum punches during happy hour. The Lumberyard building—home to the Barefoot Cowboy, Driftwood Dave’s, the barbershop, and Jake’s—looked like the proverbial cake that someone had left out in the rain; the building simply caved in on itself. Homes were violently torn apart, their contents thrown out into the yard, the street. Who could tell what had been a ceiling or a wall or a bathroom door? There was plaster, glass, metal in heaps and piles everywhere. It looked like a bomb had detonated; the damage was…atomic, nuclear.
Word started rolling in from the North Shore Road, Chocolate Hole, Gifft Hill. One family of six survived by hiding in their laundry room. One man crouched behind a table on its side for three hours as the sliding glass door across the room bowed in and out as though it were breathing. Multiple witnesses saw telephone poles flying through the air like missiles. Cars were flipped. A couch ended up in the neighbor’s front yard; a refrigerator ended up in the bedroom; a hot-tub cover was caught in the high branches of a tree.
What about beyond the stone gates at Caneel Bay? This was, perhaps, what most took us by surprise. The genteel, elegant resort had been ravaged—roofs ripped off, trees uprooted, buildings flooded and filled with sand, the entire place simply annihilated.
The Centerline Road was impassable due to downed trees. The hillside between Maho and Leicester Bays looked like a winter landscape; all of the trees were stripped bare, broken, left a burned-looking brown.
Eventually, we heard from our friends on the “other side of the world,” in Coral Bay. Shipwreck Landing, one of our favorite places to order coconut shrimp and listen to live music, had been decimated. Concordia, which had such delicious breakfasts, was blown away. Boats were dashed against the rocks, or they capsized and sank. The carnage in Hurricane Hole turned our stomachs.
Few of us realized that tornadoes are a common phenomenon when a hurricane hits land. The friction between open ocean and hills can cause spin, especially when the feeder bands roll through. The spot on St. John that saw the most tornado activity was the East End because it has elevation and because it’s so exposed. There were thirteen tornadoes recorded on the East End alone. Unlike a hurricane, a tornado’s path is unpredictable. One villa remains untouched while the villa next door is turned into kindling.
The compound belonging to Duncan Huntley was pulverized. When his closest neighbor saw the damage, he said, “It seemed like Inga had a personal vendetta against the place.” A cast-iron planter that must have weighed seventy pounds had smashed through the roof of Dunk’s garage and crushed Dunk’s G-wagon. Every building lost its roof; the 140-inch screen from the home theater ended up in the swimming pool. Nothing was salvageable. The neighbor said that even if Dunk lost his shirt in Vegas, he was still a lucky man. “If he’d stayed in the villa,” the neighbor said, “he’d surely be dead.”
Imagine our relief when, the morning after the hurricane ended, the Singing Dog came sailing into the harbor. Captains Stephen and Kelly had successfully outrun the storm—and not only that, they had a working satellite radio that allowed many of us to contact our relatives back in the States to let them know we were still alive.
At first, that’s all we could claim: We were upright and breathing.
The satellite radio also brought news that help was coming; the National Guard and the U.S. Navy were on their way.
There was no power, no water. Never mind rebuilding it; just cleaning it all up would require a Herculean effort.
Someone discovered that if you stood on the third-floor balcony of the Dolphin Market building downtown, you could get a very weak cell signal. Hey, it was better than nothing, and before we knew it, that balcony was as crowded as the bar at Skinny Legs after the Eight Tuff Miles race. A line started to form because someone wisely pointed out that the balcony would hold only so much weight and the last thing we wanted was for someone who’d survived the hurricane to plunge to his or her death trying to call Cousin Randy in Baltimore.
The balcony and the line to get to the balcony became the place where we connected not only with the outside world but also with each other. Nestor from Pine Peace Market let everyone know that he would open the store. The owners of the Longboard would cook a community dinner, everyone welcome. There would be stir-fry and Chinese noodles over at 420 to Center.
Someone declared that what he really wanted was Candi’s barbecue—but, alas, Candi’s didn’t survive.
Those who had generators and gas offered assistance to those who didn’t. Other items we needed included chain saws, bottled water, shovels,
