Local Resident Tells Of Hurricane Hugo

Historical November 1989 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

Editor’s note: Gabrielle DiLorenzo wrote the following letter to her parents, Bernadette and Rocco DiLorenzo, 61xx Kingsbury, from her home in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, describing her experiences in Hurricane Hugo. Gabby, age 29, has taught Spanish at the Country Day School in St. Croix for the last four years.

Her parents have graciously offered to share this letter with us. Wednesday, September 20, 1989 Dear Mother & Father: Hi! I’ve been wanting to write a letter or call you, but I decided to write instead.

This Saturday, September 16, Susan [a fellow teacher] and I swam in the ocean at Duggan’s Reef.

She was worried about approaching Hurricane Hugo and predicted that floodwaters would wash away the beach.

On Saturday people were in a buying frenzy at all the supermarkets: bottled water, candles, canned food.

At a lumber store, I saw a lot of people stocking up on plywood to nail over their windows. Only 1/2 of the usual crowd were at church Saturday night, and we prayed that the hurricane would spare St. Croix. Sunday morning was rainy, overcast and windy.

All during the morning, they had announcements urging people to buy canned goods, batteries and first aid supplies. I turned off the gas tanks outside the house and closed all the shutters. John [a friend] called to say that there had been a big crowd in for the 9 a.m. Mass.

I was still listening to the radio, and they played only religious broadcasts and gospel songs.

At about 2 p.m., I put on my bicycle crash helmet. I kept hearing on the radio about roofs blowing off.

At first the hurricane was expected on St. Croix at 6 or 7 p.m. I moved my car outside away from trees.

The wind was picking up speed. Inside, I kept listening to the radio.

A man from Martinique called to say that he could see roofs flying off houses like pieces of paper and big trees snapping like matchsticks.

On St. Thomas, they had a problem with tourists and vacationers who were standing around on the wharf, waiting to be entertained by the hurricane.

A guy went down to the waterfront to warn them that a hurricane was approaching, and they told him to go to hell. Susan called me at 7 p.m. and I told her that the wind had already pulled a metal louver off the back door, and the porch screen had started to blow away.

The wind had begun to sound like horses galloping, or a train. I moved to the bathroom closet, with a candle, and brought some presents to wrap and some mending. I put a rug on the bathroom floor and lay down.

At almost midnight, I heard a deafening noise of someone banging on the door in the middle of a rattling wind that shook the whole house.

At first, I thought it was one of my neighbors at the door, but it was the sound of the galvanized metal roof on the porch pulling off. Wind was slamming things into the front door and window, and blowing the plants and furniture on the porch, so it was hard for me to distinguish sounds. Finally I heard a rumble and clatter when the metal of the roof blew off.

On the radio from St. Thomas a weather forecaster predicted that the severe winds would last 2 more hours.

I tried lying on the floor under my bed, but the sound of the wind in there was like thunder. Rain water was pouring in from under the front door and through cracks in the louvers.

There seemed to be a storm inside the house. Slamming, cracking noises got louder and louder and so I crawled through the middle of water back to the bathroom. I could hear breaking glass upstairs and I thought it would have been better for me to stay with other people just in case anyone fainted or got cut.

Mrs. Beatty [Gabby’s landlady] had insisted on staying alone in her house, and I had felt so safe in my apartment since all the shutters are metal and it’s built into the side of a hill.

In the bathroom, I could hear rattling and cracking.

When I shined my flashlight into the kitchen, I could see that the louvers on the window were snapping off. Blasts of wind and rain shot through the whole apartment.

Since the bathroom door is so flimsy, I didn’t try to close it. I sat on a stool in the closet with my feet up against the wall, and turned on the radio once every hour.

The banana crop in Dominica had been destroyed.

As early as 7 p.m. all the docks on the St. Thomas waterfront had been carried out to sea.

A 20 ft. powerboat sank into the harbor.

The Montserratt Hospital had been completely wiped out.

At first the wind had sounded a lot like the El train in Chicago, accompanied by a steady bass drum roll.

Now the wind sounded like I was stuck in between the propellers of a plane that was just taking off.

The floor was flooded about 1 inch.

On the radio, the governor announced that a curfew had been set and that anyone out in the street who wasn’t National Guard or an emergency worker would be arrested. People had already begun breaking out the front windows of stores and looting. I stayed in the bathroom closet and watched clothing and paper fly in the door. Sounds of creaking, snapping and smashing continued, as if a herd of bulls were stampeding the back porch and the roof.

I tried lying in the bathtub twice, but I got too cold. I could see flashes of lightning and waving trees through the kitchen window. I got back into the closet and put on the only clothes I could find—that fancy gray blazer Carrie wore for her wedding. I had my bike helmet on all this time.

The floor was a standing puddle of wet towels, wet rug, bits of leaves, branches, dirt, tests I had corrected, my grade book, letters, envelopes, stamps and a painting.

My ears were filled with pressure all this time, and a roaring, hissing wind kept saying “w000w, w000w” in a high-pitched voice.

The slamming, tapping and rumbling I heard could have been from outside, from the kitchen area or the back porch. I didn’t come out of the closet, except a few times to use the toilet.

The wind had changed at about 2:30, so things in the house weren’t blowing around so much, but the sound of the wind was hideous.

It would die down, and I’d breathe a sigh of relief, and then start again.

It was supposed to end at 2 a.m., but the storm was only traveling at 9 miles an hour so I guess it lingered over St. Croix, taking time to blow everything to pieces.

The wind had a background beat like kettle drums and an accompaniment of a high, sick whining.

It was hard to hear the rain through all this, but the crickets sang continuously.

At 5:30 I couldn’t get any more radio stations.

At 6 I could see a whitish light in the room, but the storm continued.

When I glanced into the main room, I saw a complete havoc of overturned chairs, dirt, bags, broken glass, dishes, water, papers, books, bug spray, pencils, cardboard.

The wind had picked thing up from off shelves, blown down shelves and brought in clods of dirt that were sticking to the walls everywhere like polka dots.

The entire kitchen window was gone—louvers, frame, screen—everything.

All the louvers were gone off the back door. Outside I could see gray trees blown down to the ground. Outside, everything was wet, drizzly and gray.

The valley was a bald patch of broken twigs, and sheets of metal and plywood were scattered everywhere.

The ground looked like a dump filled with overturned, splintered trees.

We nailed some old louvers into the back door.

My back porch had no roof at all, and pieces of the roof, furniture, one half of a big metal table and muddy curtains lay in a wet, messy pile mixed with pieces of glass from the louvers from upstairs. Dead, smashed trees and snakes of telephone cable are lying across all the streets. People were outside pulling trash away from their houses or nailing plywood onto blown out windows.

Each house got hit in a unique way.

Some had no second floor, others were missing all the windows on one side, and others were o.k. You can let everybody know I’m o.k. in case I don’t have time to write.

Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1989.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times1989_11.pdf, printed page(s) 1, 7; PDF page(s) 1, 8.