My personal experience of #Hurricane #Irma
Let me start at the beginning. For over more than a week we realized that this monster was going to come for us, to wreak havoc on our tiny island Sint Martin in the Caribbean sea. All precautionary measures were taken by us, I honestly thought we were very well prepared. But boy, how I was wrong on this one. Despite of all our preparations, which I had expected it would have given me some peace of mind, I was super jumpy and nervous all day.
My hospital job was still counting on me in the morning, in the afternoon we were still making sandbags just to be on the safe side, cooking for the hotel guests for the day after the storm. Basically I was running up and down the whole day. We had an extremely good briefing by the manager of the hotel ( I was at this location because my boyfriend is a chef here, and I would return to the hospital after the storm to relieve my staying in colleagues), and by that time the nerves really started to get to me. Only then I also realized that there was an option that people actually might get hurt around me, so I decided to set up an emergency room in the hotel. I choose the room just across from mine for easy access. So AED in, emergency kit in, I even brought some antique surgical instruments (hey you never know), clean water, ducttape (McGyver saved the world with this wright?), basically everything was there ready to use.
We took a last wine to fall asleep, trying to catch as many hours as possible before the storm would reach. Of course sleep wouldn't come, but eventually I drifted off, also to wake up a couple of times. Around 3 AM I woke up in a way that ended my sleeping session, and the wind at that time was already seriously picking up. In the briefing earlier on we had learned that when the wind would get too bad, we would be expected to come to the main hallway, so by 3.30 we did. By that time the wind was howling through the building, and the sliding doors of every hotel room were shivering. Once reaching the hallway, almost all the hotel guests and staff were already there, and people were just waiting in silence. At this moment my cellphone reception was still okay, and I sent a message to my family in Europe it had started. Irma at this moment, had started literally knocking on the walls outside. You know the knocking, like your parents expect you to come inside immediately.
