Two couples from Mobile spent their Caribbean vacation hunkered down inside a resort as Hurricane Irma — then the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic — hammered the island of Antigua east of Puerto Rico.
Kim Boruty, one of the Mobilians on the trip, said everyone at the resort came through the storm safely, though many locals on the island dealt with flooded homes.
‘We Slept Through Most of It’
Boruty said the category 5 storm was less terrifying than expected from inside the resort, which fared well overall.
“A couple times the wind rattled the doors, the glass doors, but it wasn’t really bad, we slept through most of it,” she said. “Some of the people in some of the taller buildings felt the sway of the building as the winds kicked up, but we did not.”
The aftermath was visible everywhere outside: sand blown across much of the resort’s lawns. Boruty measured roughly a foot to a foot and a half of it.
Resort staff handed out care packages so guests could stay sheltered in their rooms overnight, and the property had a generator stocked with enough diesel fuel for several days.
Boruty was scheduled to fly home that Thursday — but with Irma still carving a destructive path across the Atlantic, she worried her flight path might cross the storm a second time. “That’s definitely a possibility, and a concern,” she said. Even so, she was glad she made the trip. “We did get to experience a few days in paradise — gorgeous weather, beautiful beaches and wonderful people,” she said. “It’s just the last couple of days that weren’t so great.”