From Cuba to Antigua, Caribbean islanders began counting the cost of Hurricane Irma on Sunday after the brutal storm left a trail of death, destruction and chaos from which the tourist-dependent region could take years to recover.
The Category 5 storm, which killed at least 28 people across the region, devastated housing, power supplies and communications, leaving some small islands almost cut off from the world. European nations sent military reinforcements to keep order amid looting, while the damage was expected to total billions of dollars.
Ex-pat billionaires and poor islanders alike were forced to take cover as Irma tore roofs off buildings, flipped cars and killed livestock, raging from the Leeward Islands across Puerto Rico and Hispaniola then into Cuba before turning on Florida.
Waves of up to 36 feet (11 meters) smashed businesses along the Cuban capital Havana’s sea-side drive on Sunday morning. Further east, high winds whipped Varadero, the island’s most important tourist resort.
“It’s a complete disaster and it will take a great deal of work to get Varadero back on its feet,” said Osmel de Armas, 53, an aquatic photographer who works on the beach at the battered resort.
Sea-front hotels were evacuated in Havana and relief workers spent the night rescuing people from homes in the city center as the sea penetrated to historic depths in the flood-prone area.
U.S President Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration on Sunday for Puerto Rico, where Irma killed at least 3 people and left hundreds of thousands without electricity. Trump also expanded federal funds available to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which suffered extensive damage to homes and infrastructure.
Further east in the Caribbean, battered islands such as St. Martin and Barbuda were taking stock of the damage as people began emerging from shelters to scenes of devastation.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the death toll on the Dutch part of St. Martin had doubled to four, and that 70 percent of homes had been damaged or destroyed.
Following reports of looting, the Netherlands said it would increase its military presence on the island to 550 soldiers by Monday. Rutte said that to ensure order, security forces were authorized to act with a “firm hand”.
Alex Martinez, 31, a native of Florida who was vacationing on the Dutch side of St. Martin when Irma hit the island in the early hours of Wednesday, vividly described how his hotel was gutted by the storm, turning it into a debris-strewn tip.
Doors were torn from hinges, windows shattered, cars lifted off the ground and furniture blown through the rooms after Irma hit the building with a burst of pressure that was “like you were getting sucked out of an aeroplane,” he said.
Martinez, his wife and two others barricaded themselves in their bathroom, pushing with all their might to secure the door as Irma battered it with winds of up to 185 mph (300 km/h).
“That’s when we thought, ‘that was it’,” he said. “I honestly, swear to God, thought we were going to die at that point in time. Everything continued for maybe 20, 30 minutes; my wife’s there, she’s praying, praying, praying, praying, and things just kinda calmed down. I guess that’s when the eye (of the storm came).”
