Aid groups and families struggled Tuesday to reach residents on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica after Hurricane Maria pummeled the country before hurtling toward the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
“So far we have lost all what money can buy and replace,” the prime minister wrote on Facebook just after 1 a.m. Tuesday. “My greatest fear for the morning is that we will wake to news of serious physical injury and possible deaths as a result of likely landslides triggered by persistent rains.”
The winds, he said, had swept away the roofs of nearly every person he had contacted; his own roof reportedly had been one of the first to go. Skerrit described the physical damage as “devastating … indeed, mind boggling.”
“Come tomorrow morning we will hit the road, as soon as the all-clear is given, in search of the injured and those trapped in the rubble,” Skerrit wrote. “My focus now is in rescuing the trapped and securing medical assistance for the injured.
“We will need help, my friend, we will need help of all kinds.”
Skerrit added that Dominica’s airport and seaport would probably be out of operation for a few days. He appealed to “friendly nations” and other organizations to help with helicopter services and other aid.
Nearly all updates from the island ceased after Skerrit’s post, however. Preliminary reports from neighboring islands indicated only ham radio operators on Dominica had been able to communicate with others in and out of the country.
Authorities were still trying to reach Dominica on Tuesday morning but had been unable to establish communications there since the storm hit, said Mandela Christian, program officer for preparedness and response for the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. They had teams on standby, he said, to conduct aerial surveys of damage “so we can see how we need to focus our interventions there.”
Lorenzo Violante, who had been coordinating Irma-related operations for the Red Cross, said his aid organization had also lost contact with Dominica after Maria hit.
“Since 8 p.m. we haven’t had much information with the Dominica Red Cross,” Violante said. “We made contact at midnight, and since then communications haven’t been reactivated.”
Just last week, Dominica Red Cross Society in Roseau, the island’s capital, was collecting emergency supplies to deliver to St. Martin, which had been battered by Hurricane Irma. Now, Violante said, they are the ones who need aid.
“What we know is that there’s a very important level of destruction, but that was basically at the beginning of the hurricane so we’re anticipating massive destruction across the island,” he said. “In fact, the people we talked to from the [Dominica Red Cross in Roseau], they had incurred damage themselves. They lost their roofs and had to go to shelters.”
Violante added the Red Cross is preparing an emergency operation to Dominica.
“It’s very probable that there were many landslides and that we’ll need to deploy search and rescue teams,” he said.
Late Monday, a police official told the Associated Press there were no casualties reported yet but noted officers had been unable to do a full assessment because of the storm.
“Where we are, we can’t move,” Inspector Pellam Jno Baptiste told the AP in a brief phone interview.
#Maria made landfall on Dominica at 915 pm AST as a category 5 #hurricane with 160 mph (260 km/h) winds https://t.co/QSxq7VPr15? pic.twitter.com/3Z1Q95WYlM
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 19, 2017
Dominica, whose population is about 72,000, is a country about the size of greater New York City that bills itself the “Nature Island” of the Caribbean for its lush volcanic mountains and tropical rain forests. It is a sovereign nation that gained its independence from Britain in 1978.
The island is also home to Ross University School of Medicine, whose students are primarily U.S. citizens. Late Monday, the school posted an update to its Facebook page indicating there would be a roll call the following afternoon “in the event of complete loss of Internet and cellphone signals.”
Through Tuesday, the school’s page was filled with comments from anxious family members and friends who said they had not been able to contact their loved ones on the island. A call to the school’s 24-hour hotline led to a prerecorded message asking people to leave a message. Early Tuesday evening, a handful of families finally were able to contact a few students, according to reports that trickled in on the school's Facebook page.
The school said it was “relentlessly working” to account for everyone at Ross and speculated strong wind gusts may have prevented some students from making the scheduled 3 p.m. roll call. Ross University’s parent company issued a statement on behalf of William Owen, the dean of the medical school, saying the school’s U.S.-based officials were in communication with the State Department and Canadian officials. Owen was in Florida, not on Dominica, when the hurricane hit, a spokesman added.
“We are deeply concerned for the well-being of our university community and the people of Dominica. We pray that everyone is unharmed as we persistently work to confirm the status of our beloved students and colleagues, as well as their families and other loved ones,” Owen said in the statement. “ ... we are dedicating our resources and energy to confirm the safety of our people, provide supplies and shelter, and ultimately evacuate our community. In addition, we are working to provide regular updates to the families and loved ones of our Ross Med community to keep everyone apprised of developments.”
"It actually unsafe to step out of the door," says man who decided to ride out Hurricane Maria in Dominica https://t.co/14DP0bJ7hh
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) September 19, 2017
As Hurricane Maria bore down on Dominica Monday evening, some of the most revealing updates about the storm’s havoc came in Skerrit’s succinct, prayerful Facebook posts.
Earlier in the day, the prime minister had warned residents that the looming hurricane would be one of the most dangerous storms to pass over Dominica and ordered schools and nonessential government services to close; he urged private businesses to do the same.
By Monday evening, Skerrit was feeling firsthand Maria’s “merciless” 160-mph winds and relentless rain.
“We do not know what is happening outside. We not dare look out. All we are hearing is the sound of galvanize flying. The sound of the fury of the wind. As we pray for its end!” Skerrit wrote shortly after 8 p.m. Monday.
His home “may have sustained some damage,” he added later.
By 9:20 p.m., there was no question about whether his home had been affected by the storm: Its roof had been torn off.
“I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane,” Skerrit wrote. “House is flooding.”
Though he said he was rescued a short while later, Skerrit's posts prompted others to wonder: If the storm had so devastated the prime minister’s home, what of the others on the island? A handful of videos from Dominica posted to social media — before many people there apparently lost cell service — showed roaring wind and rain battering the island in the dark of night.
Many of Dominica’s residents had just finished rebuilding after Tropical Storm Erika devastated the island in 2015, making Hurricane Maria’s timing that much more punishing. On Monday, Maria rapidly strengthened as it approached Dominica, becoming the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall on the island in recorded history.
After Dominica, Maria moved north to batter the French territory of Guadeloupe. The Associated Press reported that there was one fatality on the island, the first attributed to the storm.
Videos posted overnight by the territory’s official Twitter account showed sheets of rain slamming Basse-Terre, one of Guadeloupe’s two main islands, while trees were whipped sideways by the force of the wind.
[Direct] #Maria #Basseterre Les vents sont extrêmement violents. Restez confinés. Ne sortez sous aucun prétexte. pic.twitter.com/0D8O0YY8a0
— Préfet de Guadeloupe (@Prefet971) September 19, 2017
On Tuesday morning, officials on Guadeloupe said 80,000 homes there were without power, and that there was an increased risk of flooding and landslides. Images from the islands showed felled trees strewn about the roads and neighborhoods submerged in water.
Although the French island of Martinique also received heavy wind and rain Monday night and Tuesday morning — resulting in some flooded neighborhoods — it eluded the full force of Maria compared to neighboring islands.
“In Martinique, reconnaissance operations are still underway but already we can see that there is no significant damage,” Jacques Witkowski, France’s head of civil protection and crisis response, said at a news conference in Paris, according to Reuters.
#ouraganMaria Les eaux ont envahi la commune du Prêcheur 😮 pic.twitter.com/kM9iW4ObF3
— RCI Martinique (@RCI_MQ) September 19, 2017
Meanwhile, officials on the islands of St. Martin and St. Barthelemy raised alert levels Tuesday morning as Hurricane Maria headed their way. As The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang reported, Maria has the potential for more widespread destruction as it continues along its path through the Caribbean, including many places already hit by Hurricane Irma.
In St. Croix, which largely survived Irma intact, residents had been launching aid operations to help the hard-hit islands of St. John and St. Thomas. But as of Tuesday, they were facing a hurricane warning and hunkering down for Maria, which could reach the island by Tuesday evening.
Katie Nelson, a local resident who has been aiding with relief efforts there, said in a phone interview that the local curfew had started at 8 a.m. She said she was shuttered inside a multistory apartment, waiting to ride out the storm.
“I’m not scared; I’m more sad right now because we were the only island spared [by Irma],” she said. “If anything happens to us, then there’s no island left. We’ve been the support and want to keep being it.”
She added, “I still feel like we’ll get lucky again. It looks bad, though. Everyone’s scared, but it’s just — we have to be here for everyone.”
Judi Buckley, another St. Croix resident, said she had recently landed back to join the relief effort on St. John and St. Thomas.
“Our help has been pouring into those islands, and now that we’re the ones in need, a lot of our shelves are depleted,” she said. “We sent our supplies to St John and St Thomas! Some shelves have been restocked since we were alerted about Maria, but still, only some, for instance, it’s impossible to find batteries in the island today.”
After St. Croix, the storm is likely to pass very close to or directly affect Puerto Rico from southeast to northwest, The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang reported.
Maria could become the second Category 5 hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in recorded history if it maintains its strength.
Rachelle Krygier contributed to this report.
Read more: