Surviving Wilma's wrath
By Skip Kelley mayorskip@hotmail.com Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 11:44:28 +0000
Note: Hurricane Wilma was not the first hurricane Skip Kelley has dealt with.
Sunday morning. October 16,2005 was a beautiful fall day. We just got through eight straight days of rain and everyone was glad to see the sunshine. It was also exciting because we were on our way to a much-needed two-week vacation to a resort called Mayan Palace on the Maya Riviera that is 30 miles south of Cancun, Mexico. Long term forecast was for clear skies and temperatures in the high 80's. What a treat this should be!
Monday morning we headed out to the pool and the beach and spent the entire day doing nothing but enjoying it's beauty.
First thing Tuesday morning Skip went golfing (surprise, surprise!). While he was gone Nina, and her brother Phil and his wife Kelly, decided to turn on CNN on TV just to see what was happening in the world. Much to everyone's surprise, we learned that there was a category five hurricane named Wilma coming right at us, and due to arrive on Thursday. Well we all know hurricanes are unpredictable sometimes, but we still should be smart and see if we can book a flight out just to be on the safe side. However the airlines said that there was absolutely nothing available for the rest of the week. Well it's still a nice day to go back to the pool and beach and relax, so that's what we did. But we'll keep a close eye on the storm.
Wednesday was our day to drive into Cancun to do a little shopping and sightseeing. We rented a car and headed on our little adventure. We had a relatively nice day (except for getting stopped by a Mexican street cop who didn't speak English and none of us speak Spanish. We still have no idea why he stopped us, but after calling our resort and having him talk to someone there, he let us go. We returned to Mayan Palace late that afternoon and immediately turned on CNN for an update. The story of Wilma was not better than before. It was still heading for us and could cause tremendous damage. That evening the resort began informing us that they would begin preparations of the facility and that they had a very secure building on site that is used as a shelter. They would continue to update us every several hours. That night it began to rain and the wind started to pick up.
By Thursday morning and all through the day it continued to escalate in strength. We were informed that we would be moved to the shelter between 7-9pm. We were allowed to pack a small bag with just essential items, including bathroom needs, and our passports and plane tickets along with a pillow. All other luggage was to remain in our suite. We arrived at the shelter shortly after 9pm.
NOW THE ADVENTURE BEGINS!!! The shelter was a very large, two story warehouse. The first floor had a huge kitchen where much of the food for the four restaurants on site was initially prepared and where the employees were fed. It also was the storage area for all their supplies. The second floor where we were to be housed was used for more supply storage, file storage and some offices and bathrooms. All storage was pushed to the perimeter walls creating large center areas for hundreds of chairs and a scattering of chaise lounges from the pool area. There were several large rooms like this throughout the facility. As we arrived it was first come, first served. Stake out your area as quickly as possible and stay there. They estimated that there would be about 2000 people staying there, including 200 employees. Families with small children and the elderly or handicapped were (rightfully so!) were brought in first. Only about 300 cots (chaise lounges) were available. Everyone else would have to sleep in chairs. Well, leave it to Nina to come through for us-she found eight empty cots in a narrow aisle between racks of file storage boxes. We claimed four and another family claimed the others. This turned out to be a huge difference over the next 3 1/2 days. I can't imagine what it was like for the 1500 or so people who had to spend all that time in a chair. The resort staff was phenomenal throughout our entire ordeal. Keep in mind that these 200 people are locals who had know idea how their own families were doing or whether or not they even had a house to go back to when it was all over. Yet they took care of us liked we were royalty and almost always had a smile on their faces. My hat goes off to them and I pray that their families are as safe and sound as we are today. Shortly after getting all of us into the shelter, they were already coming around with food and drinks for us. They also tried to supply every single area with as many fans as possible because it was very, very hot with everything completely boarded up. For the next 24 hours the storm was in full gear and it constantly sounded as if the wind would blow the roof right off the building. We did manage to get a few hours sleep that night. By 4:30 am I was roaming around the warehouse just to get a good visual of the amount of people in there and their accommodations in comparison to ours. We were very lucky indeed! By 5:00am the staff was already bringing out large containers of fresh coffee, which actually was quite good. By 7:00am they served pastries. By 9:00am they served scrambled eggs and ham with a freshly baked roll. At 2:30pm the served a hot lunch. 7:00pm-more pastries, followed by a hot dinner at 10:00pm. This was kept up throughout our stay. They were quite amazing. We also had plenty of water to drink and for the first 48 hours even had a variety of sodas on ice.
Friday evening about 7:00 pm the eye of the storm was directly over us. We were all permitted to go outside to the loading dock area for 45 minutes. It was heaven! It really cheered all of us up and gave us a second wind in order to endure the second half of the storm. When it came back it did so with a vengeance. It seemed even worse than before. It continued all through Saturday night.
By Sunday morning we actually had some intermittent clearing. We were able to begin to walk around the premises and check out the damage. We made it back to our building and up to the third floor where our suite was. After forcing our door open due to debris that was blocking it we saw that our unit was completely trashed. All the windows had been blown out and the entire ceiling was down. Everything was drenched to the bone. Pictures were torn off the wall. It was an amazing sight. We also took a bottle water shower that made us feel almost human. When we arrived back at the shelter we were informed that management was trying to arrange for some buses to transport as many people as possible to a small airport in Merida, Mexico that did not sustain any major damage and we could try to catch a flight to Mexico City and then on to home from there. Once again it would be families with small children and other special needs people first, if of course they elected to take the chance of leaving. They were hoping to have 12 buses so that many of us could go. As it turned out, only 4 buses showed up. So an announcement was made that they would try to get more on Monday. Oh well!! About an hour later, as I was on the loading dock getting some air and talking to new friends, one of the staff asked if any of us had signed up for the bus because they had five seats still available. I was the only one there at the time that had signed up, so we were told to grab our belongings and get to the bus ASAP. The good news is that we obviously made it home safe and sound. The bad news is, what is normally a 3 hour ride was a 9 hour ride from hell. We drove a good part of the way in chest high water with cars, trucks and other buses stranded on both sides of the highway. Hundreds of people were walking through the water trying to find dry ground anywhere. The water was so deep that it was splashing up onto the windshield of the bus. But we kept chugging along at a couple of miles an hour. How we made it through I'll never know-but we did.
Monday morning We finally made it to the airport about 6:00 am just as it was opening. There were already thousands of people in the terminal. We waited on line for about 90 minutes and the line to buy tickets to Mexico City hardly moved. Then my angel appeared. A woman whom I don't know came up to me and asked if I had flown on Continental. When I responded yes, she said that she just heard that they were bringing in several airplanes to get us out of there and that the would be open at 8:00am at the other end of the terminal. We went there immediately and got in line. We were fortunate enough to get onto the first flight direct to Houston with a connecting flight to Newark shortly after arrival. We made it home safe and sound and obviously exhausted but grateful at 11:00pm Monday night.
As long as this writing is, it is the shortest version I could possibly tell. There are so many more parts to it with some very horrifying stories. I am very thankful to all of the people that helped us along the way and for all the new people we got to meet. I also pray for the families of all those employees at Mayan Palace and for the others in that entire area.
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