~ A St. Maarten Student in Dominica ~
David Pierre-Louis, a 20-year-old computer science student from Dutch Quarter, is still reeling from his experiences in Dominica during Hurricane Maria two months ago. Back on St. Maarten now, the young man stopped by The Daily Herald this week to share his story with WEEKender.
After receiving a scholarship to attend Dominica State College, one of the first such scholarships ever awarded by the Dominica Association of St. Maarten, David was excited about his future. He found a place to live with his cousin, an apartment in the region known as King’s Hill. He was just settling in with his new classes and finding his way on the college campus when he heard that his home island of St. Maarten was in the crosshairs of a monstrously huge hurricane, namely Irma. He was concerned about his father and his many friends facing the prospects of a life-wrecking storm. This worry dominated his thoughts so much that he didn’t even realize that his new home was facing a similar threat.
Maria slammed into Dominica on September 18. It was a Monday evening. David and his cousins and aunt had prepared over the weekend. They felt secure in the concrete building with shutters on the windows, but the force of the storm was enough to shake the building as if an earthquake had hit. “The power was cut about 5:30pm,” recalled the survivor. “It had been raining all day, but the winds didn’t pick up until about 6:30pm. By 7:00pm, it was fully dark and the winds were very strong. I could hear galvanized roofs crashing around.”
David remembered the sound of the building’s unfinished wall falling down around 9:00pm. After that, the storm shutters on the windows began to lose their resistance to the wind, bending in at the middle. The family took turns holding the shutters in place by wedging whatever they could into the weak spots. Water was pouring in under the doors – odd, since the house was on a hill, but the wind was defying logic. David tried to sweep the floods out, but to no avail. Exhausted, the family gave up the fight around 2:00am and let the storm do what it would, they had to grab some sleep.
The morning light revealed a wasted landscape of broken homes, mud and debris. One home higher up on the hill appeared to have exploded, its contents scattered all about. The wind was still gusting enough to send dangerous debris through the air, so they kept inside most of the morning, venturing out only to check on neighbours and find a way to help those in need.
As time stretched into days and weeks, the struggle to find food and water became the top priority. David reports the community he had called home in Dominica was at a high part of the land and therefore had no water, because the pumps had failed. Most people had barrels to catch rainwater, but those had blown away during the storm. In fact, he says the water supply still hasn’t been restored to King’s Hill. Many people found sustenance in fallen coconuts, and these became the most valued commodities, as they provided both nutrition and fluids. David remembers a friend gave him a coconut for which he was very grateful. Although there was little to eat, he says they all managed to put something in their stomachs each day, however little it might have been.
He took on the responsibility of collecting water each day, which meant he had to walk a half-hour route down the mountain to where a pipe supplied water. The walk back up to his home was almost two hours, carrying the heavy load of water up the rugged path. He noted that such work was stressful and he saw how people were affected by this kind of stress. “People were fighting over the bits of galvanized [zinc roofing material] saying, ‘This came off my house, it’s mine...’ ‘No, I saw it go from there...” The bent sheet metal would be straightened out as much as possible and reused to protect the homes again. Some men made a business of straightening out the zincs and reselling it. “These were hard times; people were doing what they could.”
In time, David managed to tour through Roseau, and what he saw there shook him to his core. Cars buried in mud, roads washed away, evidence of looting where stores and warehouses had been vandalized, fishing boats grounded and a terrible smell. “There was so much dust that you couldn’t go there without starting to cough. People wore masks over their faces. The sports field was no longer a park, but a pile of debris where the refuse had been dumped. There were police trying to stop the looting, but they weren’t armed so they could do nothing. There was a curfew in place in Roseau from 4:00pm until 6:00am, but people couldn’t get water during those hours; the heat was unbearable, and the lines were very long. Many people were locked up for trying to get water after the curfew.”
The saddest thing for David was a personal loss of two family members. Two aunties, one from either side of his family, passed away in the aftermath of the storm. One had been going for water in the heat of the day and apparently suffered heat stroke, falling and hitting her head. Another simply couldn’t take the stress of the situation, the hurricane had taken her roof and doors, and part of her floor had caved in. After the storm moved on from Dominica, she lay down and passed in her bed. “There aren’t only deaths directly from the hurricane,” said David with a sad sigh. “There are a lot of indirect deaths.”
David is in St. Maarten for now, helping his father rebuild his home in Dutch Quarter. He is hoping to return to Dominica State College by March. “The lower school was destroyed, but the upper school had more concrete buildings and did better, but I don’t know what will happen. Some of the teachers have lost their homes, so they might not continue to teach.”
Despite all this, David says he isn’t so much afraid of hurricanes as fascinated by them. He says he is grateful that there was almost no disease that spread through the population in Dominica or in St. Maarten. With a timid smile, he said, “Things will get better in time.”
