Hurricane Season 2017 - Death and Destruction In the Caribbean

By Lee Vyborny and Karen Vyborny

'Hurricane Season 2017' is an account of the destruction, death, and the devastating aftermath of the 2017 Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria on the Caribbean's Leeward Islands, Vieques, and Puerto Rico. It relates the personal experiences of two retires living on the island of Vieques set against the backdrop of contemporary news reports that describe the events before, during, and after the violent storms struck the Islands. It is a multi-media eBook that combines original text, photographs, digital images, videos, web links, and news media articles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359028641

Lee Vyborny

Lee Vyborny was involved with the U.S. Navy submarine force for more than thirty years. He served aboard a fast attack submarine on patrols in the Pacific and was chosen as one of the original twelve crew members on the Submarine NR-1. He was an Instructor at the Navy’s Nuclear Power Training Unit in Windsor, CT. and a navy diver. He later became a design and production engineer at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, and a program manager for the development and production of shipboard navigational equipment at Sperry Aerospace and Marine Systems. He was also the founder and president of Program Support Associates. A Consulting Engineering firm that developed and supported accounting software that tracks US Navy congressional appropriation funding. The firm had offices in Charlottesville and Arlington, Virginia, and in San Diego, California. He grew the company in size to 50 people with offices in those three cities before it was sold. Mr. Vyborny is now retired and living in the Caribbean.

Book preview

Hurricane Season 2017 - Death and Destruction In the Caribbean

Hurricane Season 2017 - Death and Destruction In the Caribbean

Crossing Paths with Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria

by

Lee Vyborny and Karen Vyborny

September 2018

Description:

'Hurricane Season 2017' is an account of the destruction, death, and the devastating aftermath of the 2017 Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria on the Caribbean's Leeward Islands, Vieques, and Puerto Rico. It relates the personal experiences of two retires living on the island of Vieques set against the backdrop of contemporary news reports that describe the events before, during, and after the violent storms struck the Islands. It is a multi-media eBook that combines original text, photographs, digital images, videos, web links, and news media articles.

ISBN: 978-0-359-02864-1

Dedication

In remembrance of Joanne Hamilton - she was a long time resident of Vieques, a good friend, and a survivor of many hurricanes including Hugo, Georges, Irene, Irma, and Maria.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Joanne devised this simple necklace, which she conferred upon herself and the other women who rode out the storm on Vieques, and then stayed to clean up and rebuild their homes while enduring many months of power outage, lines for gasoline, the communications blackout, unemployment, and diminished public services during the island’s recovery.

Those women had balls, she said. And their balls were made of steel.

Introduction

The Lesser Antilles are a chain of islands at the eastern end of the Caribbean Sea. They stand as a line of sentinels across the constant westward flow of the North Atlantic Ocean’s Trade Winds and Equatorial Current. During the late summer and fall they also become bowling pins at the end of the Atlantic’s hurricane alley. We live on one of those islands.

In 2017 Mother Nature lofted several of her most potent cyclonic storms in our direction. Most were misses, but in early September the hurricane named Irma devastated several of the Leeward Islands, and was a very near miss for us. Later that month, Hurricane Maria delivered a perfect strike against our island and our close neighbor, the Main or Big Island of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Both Irma and Maria were Category 5 hurricanes packing sustained winds at their center of more than 175 miles per hour with gusts exceeding 220 mph when they reached us. Each was stronger than an F5 tornado, and left a path of destruction more than 50 miles wide.

Hurricane Maria was a Category 5 when its eyewall struck Vieques and a Category 4 when it bounced into the middle of the 40 mile wide eastern end of Puerto Rico near the town of Yabucao. The eye of the storm and its fierce winds then swept the entire 100 mile length of the Big Island to exit near the town of Aquadilla. During its cattycorner traverse, hurricane force winds hit every part of Puerto Rico and left a swath of utter devastation.

The damage to Puerto Rico, including our island of Vieques, was catastrophic. People were left scrambling for food, water, fuel, and cash. The power grids of the islands were destroyed, and the outages lasted for many months. It is now a year later and Vieques is still being provided electrical power by FEMA furnished emergency generators at a cost of $96,000 a month in diesel fuel alone. The return of normal electrical power to Vieques and its sister island, Culebra, is years away. Reliable Internet access, with reasonable speed, was not available from any carrier for eleven months, except for some periods during the wee hours of the night. Acceptable Internet service is still intermittent.

The death toll for the territory of Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria is the subject of controversy. The after effects of the storms included flooding, lack of drinking water, and the loss of electrical power, communications, and vital medical services for extended periods. The number of hurricane related deaths in Puerto Rico has been reported as 64, 1295, 2975, and may eventually reach 4000. Puerto Ricans are United States citizens and hundreds of thousands of them have elected to leave to find a better life in the States.

This book is the story of how my wife and I came to cross paths with Hurricanes Irma and Maria. It explains how the storms affected us and the Islands on which we live.

Note: Within the pages of this eBook, all photographs, digital images, videos, and linked web sites can be accessed for better viewing by clicking on the item of interest to open it up in a separate window.

Moving to the Caribbean

Karen and I woke to a cold, grim morning on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It was late January, 2004. We were living in a small vacation cottage that we rented. It was located on the banks of the West River, about 10 miles south of Annapolis, Maryland.

Looking out of the front windows of the heated porch on the house, all we could see were shades of gray. The temperature outside was sub-zero. The river was frozen over and covered with a recent snowfall. Our two boats, the 37 foot trawler, Key Largo, and the 30 foot Catalina sailboat, Constance, were tied up at the dock just beyond the boat house that was included with the rental unit. They were not going anywhere for the next few months.

The only color in the scene was that of a red newspaper receptacle below our roadside mailbox.

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The view of the West River, MD out of our window in January 2004

(Image courtesy of the Authors)

We were computer nerds who had two laptops set up side by side on a makeshift desk below the windows. The view above our computer screens was depressing. The long range weather prediction was for a late spring that year. So, it was going to be a long time before we could go out on the calm waters of the Chesapeake Bay again – something we had so enjoyed in the previous summers.

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I was 60 and not exactly retired. However, I was fond of saying that I did not have a job and wasn’t looking for one. In the late 1980s I founded a computer software company and grew it to over fifty people with offices located in Charlottesville, VA; Washington, DC; and San Diego. My firm specialized in the development and support of a financial management system used to track shipbuilding, operations and maintenance, and research funds for the U.S. Navy. Keeping track of the arcane processes of Congressional allocation of funds and Navy’s procurement with them has been called the most complex game available to adults.

In September of 1999 (the year before the Dot Com bubble burst), I sold the company. My next three years were spent writing and promoting a book about the small submarine that I was assigned to as a member of its initial crew during the late 1960s. The title of the book is Dark Waters: An Insider’s Account of the NR-1, the Cold War’s Undercover Nuclear Sub. It is also available as an eBook titled America’s Secret Submarine.

Karen was 45 and operated an eBay listing company she established while dockside in a marina in Gloucester, VA. She helped other boaters sell things they no longer needed. Some of the more memorable items include a fully documented White Shark jaw and teeth from a monster caught off Australia, a classic MG roadster, and an experimental bi-plane.

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Karen and I were informally looking for a place to spend our later years. We had traveled across the U.S – focusing on coastal areas, and even joined a group that shared information on house-sitting in exotic locations. On that cold, overcast day, she opened her email and found an inquiry about a home swap available on the island of Vieques. A home swap was not of interest to us as we were renting, but she was intrigued by the name of a Caribbean island she did not recognize.

Do you think you would like to live on an island? she asked me.

Only if it is warm all year round, I responded.

Before we met, Karen had been a boater with many years of experience in Florida, the Bahamas, and the Intra Coastal Waterway along the eastern seaboard. She had also visited many of the Caribbean islands.

I had grown up in California, had been stationed in Hawaii while in the Navy, had graduated from the University of Miami in Florida with a degree in Industrial Engineering, and from the University of Southern California with masters in Systems Management. I had also visited Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin island of St. Croix, and the Panama Canal in support submarine sonar development projects to which I was assigned in the early 1980s. It’s safe to say that we were familiar with the tropics and its weather.

Ever heard of Vieques Island? she inquired, and I had to admit that I had not.

I Googled Vieques. It’s a small island off the east coast of Puerto Rico, she explained. Part of it has been used as a bombing range and amphibious landing site since World War II. The Navy left in May of last year. Maybe it is a good time to give it a look see.

Two days later I was on a flight from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Vieques, Puerto Rico. Karen had arranged the flight, a room reservation at the Trade Winds Guesthouse on Vieques, and an appointment with Lynn Wetherby, the owner of Rainbow Realty on the island. Karen also gave me a list of available properties of interest on the island that she found online for me to check out.

My first impression of the island of Vieques was that it is a step back in time – a return to what I imagined that the Florida Keys must have been like in the 1940s and 1950s. When I was at the University of Miami in the early 1970s, I had traveled through the Keys several times and enjoyed the ambiance. So it was an easy extrapolation back to the era and images of Bogart and Bacall movies.

The view from the street in front of the Trade Winds Guesthouse was of a sleepy, warm, and somewhat run down Caribbean fishing village of Esperanza (Hope in Spanish) with a small strip of restaurants, bars, and shops – mostly in business for tourists - on the waterfront or Malecon.

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The view down the ‘Malecon’ in Esperanza in late January 2004

(Image courtesy of the Authors)

After many hectic years starting and running a small beltway bandit firm, this warm, quiet, laid back place seemed stress free and it had an instant appeal for me.

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I don’t give tours, Lynn Wetherby told me when we first met for our appointment. There are too many people that come here and tell real estate agents that they want to see what’s available to buy, but all they really want is a free tour of the island. So, it’s $100 for three hours and I’ll show you everything that is currently available – my listings and those of others. If you end up buying a property from me, I’ll give your money back. Otherwise, you are on your own.

Lynn was blunt, and that I liked that about her. I told her that her conditions were good with me, and I asked her if it was okay to record our conversation so Karen could listen in when I returned to the States. Fine, she said. I handed her a one-hundred dollar bill and started my small voice recorder in the front seat of her big red jeep as we headed off. I don’t think she stopped talking for the next three hours as we drove most every residential road on the island and stopped at seven or eight listed properties. They ranged from a vacant lot high up on Pilon Ridge Road in the center of the island to homes ready to move into in both Esperanza on the south side of the island and in the main town of Isabel Segunda on the north coast.

I got the royal tour for my small payment, and it was well worth it. I got the run down on the history of the island, the skinny on each neighborhood, their cultural differences and the local characters, as well as a walkthrough of each available property of interest. I took a lot of pictures to send to Karen that night via low speed internet at the guesthouse.

The one place that stood out to both of us was not even among the listings Karen had selected for follow up. That was because Lynn had listed it as a potential one-acre horse farm. It was located only a half mile west of downtown Isabel Segunda, the island’s major metropolitan area and ferry port located on the north side of the island. The property was bordered on two sides by spring fed freshwater creeks (or Quebradas) that ran year round. There are very few of those on the relatively dry island. The lot was also only one hundred yards from the north coast beach known as Playa Cofi. There is direct beach access via the bed of the combined creeks as their waters flow down the sixty foot altitude change from the corner of the lot into a small lagoon, prior to crossing a fine sand beach and emptying into Vieques Sound. 

The property was one of ten parcels of a Viequense family farm or finca that was segregated into roughly one acre lots. Most of those were, and still are, the properties of members of the family that owned the farm. However, this lot was a former cow pasture and it was part of the partitioned farm. It was sold by family member Doña Diana Cepeda Perez to Don Emilio Gonzalez Cotto of Bayamon, Puerto Rico in November of 1998 for. Don Emilio built a small wood frame, metal roof house over a drive under garage like concrete structure. He also built a two stall stable with a central tack room for the horses he loved and kept in the field around the house.

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Our House as purchased in February 2004

(Images courtesy of the Authors)

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Our House as purchased in February 2004

(Images courtesy of the Authors)

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Stable remains – two cinderblock stalls and a central tack room

(Image courtesy of the Authors)

Once the Navy and Marines pulled out of Vieques in May of 2003, there was a rapid escalation of property values on the island in the somewhat false belief that there would be an influx of new buyers. After Don Emilio’s death, the FedEx Manager for the island bought the property, house, and outbuildings for $73,000 in August of 2003. He started to make improvements to the property that he envisioned as a home for his family. But he quickly realized that this was far too expensive a project and, what with prices escalating, he put his interest in it up for sale later that year.

When I arrived in Vieques, the parcel with its structures was listed at $166,000. ‘Are you kidding?’ I thought, ‘an acre with a house and stable near the beach in the Caribbean for $166,000?’ Even though the house and stable needed repair and build out, it still seemed a bargain. Especially since the property was titled – documentation that Karen and I insisted upon before we would even look at a place.

In her research on the island before I traveled to it, Karen had discovered a strange real estate condition unique to Puerto Rico. It turns out that much of the land for sale at the time had been previously been owned or allocated as U.S. Navy base property. Over the years of Navy ownership, some areas of the base were squatted upon by protestors and residents seeking a bit of land on which to build a house, and then sold to a string of subsequent buyers as untitled property. For as much as sixty years, much of the land available on Vieques, and even some of that on the Big Island of Puerto Rico, was sold to new buyers without the old proprietors having to prove that they actually owned it. However, even though a municipality, the government of Puerto Rico, or the U.S. government under one of its agencies may actually own the land, under laws of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico the squatter owns, and has rights to, any buildings or improvements he made.

The Government of Puerto Rico chose to ignore the problem as it was a low to no cost way to generate much needed housing in rural areas. A dire consequence of this policy surfaced after the devastating hurricanes of 2017 caused substantial damage to property on the Islands. Federal agencies such as FEMA and the Small Business Administration rejected funding requests from residents of untitled property because they had no documented ownership of or collateral value in their land and homes.

However, the duly titled parcel we were interested in was under contract with Lynn Wetherby’s Rainbow Realty firm to couple from New York who had put down a $15,000 deposit several months prior, and they were trying in vain to get a mortgage. Perhaps they did not realize that, because of the threat from hurricanes and earthquakes, a wood frame house in Puerto Rico is not insurable, and thus none of the lending institutions in Puerto Rico or elsewhere would sign up to a mortgage on it.

The next day, after a long discussion with Karen about the pros and cons of making the purchase, I searched for the lot that Lynn had driven me to the day before. I located the property down a dead end, grass covered road. The land sloped down to the west and that provided a view across the Vieques Channel to the 3461 foot mountain with its rain forest known as El Yunque on the east end of Puerto Rico. Even though it the lot was close to town, it was difficult to find as the house can’t be seen from any of the local paved roads.

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The view down our dead-end grass street – house on the right, Puerto Rico in the distance

(Image courtesy of the Authors)

I walked the property again, went down the bed of the conjoined streams to the beach, and took many more pictures to forward to Karen that night.

The following day, I called Lynn and let her know that we would like to make an offer of $155,000 cash. She said she would pass the offer on to the current owner. Given that the other couple had stalled out getting a mortgage, and the fact that the deposit was non-refundable, she thought he would probably accept it. She said she would let me know for sure the next day.

When I called the next day to see if the current owner had accepted, Lynn let me know that Karen had become nervous that my less than asking price offer might be rejected, so she had emailed Lynn an offer at the full asking price later in the day to seal the deal. And the owner had accepted.

Karen had out bid me for the property that I had made an offer on, and she won! Go team!

Regardless of the fact that we shot ourselves in the foot on the price, the cash transaction went smoothly. Lynn set up the closing at a local lawyer’s office two days later. And, on February 4, 2004, I returned to Maryland with the deed in my hand - to a property that Karen had not seen, on an island she had not visited.

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We spent the following few weeks drawing up a plan for the build out of the existing house, and for the stables that we would turn into guest rooms for family and friends who would want to visit. We were well aware of the fact that whatever we built could be struck by a hurricane in any given year, and we realized that getting water and food after such a storm might take weeks. So, we added a small concrete outbuilding with metal doors to act as a workshop and a storage area for storm supplies. The building included a 600 gallon cistern on the roof to be used as an emergency supply of fresh water. The next year, we would add a generator and its fuel supply to the building equipment as an emergency electrical power backup.

I made my next trip to Vieques in mid February. The purpose of the visit was to go over the build out plans provided by Fax to Chevo (Chu) Bonano and his construction team at Chu Garcia Hardware and Construction, and to launch the effort.

Chevo’s fixed price estimate for the job was:

Initial Improvements to Make the House Livable - $25,900

1900 sq ft Cement Patio on the North and West Sides of the House - $19,300

Turn Existing Stable Structure into 2 Adjacent Guest Rooms - $18,700

Add a New 12’ x 12’ Cinderblock Storage Building - $  9,360

Total Amount with expected completion by the end of May - $73,260

I returned to the States after many handshakes and assurances that our island beach house would be ready for occupancy in three months, at a total cost of about $240,000.

However, after several phone calls and faxes to Chevo went unanswered, I made a follow up visit to the island to check the progress first hand. What I found was that very little progress was being made. Chevo’s team introduced me to the concept of Island Time. Construction progress always goes slower than expected, I was told, because it is difficult to plan around material deliveries that are sporadic at best. Often, when the material does arrive, the workers needed have been temporarily assigned to other projects. The central tenant of Island Time is that when it comes to promises, Manaña does not mean ‘Tomorrow’, it just means ‘Not Today’. This did not sit well with two individuals who expected their personal project to proceed with near military precision.

Karen and I decided that, if we wanted our house done and done right in a reasonable length of time, we would have to be on the island to supervise the build out. In early March, we terminated our West River lease early, and Karen arranged a charter flight from Marathon in the Florida Keys to Vieques. We then packed everything we owned and wanted to keep into fifty-two cardboard boxes and mailed them from several small rural post offices on the western shore of the Chesapeake to ourselves in Vieques. We sold our cars in Annapolis and rented a van.

The van was loaded with our computers, electronics, and boxes of personal items. We drove it down I-95 south, visiting Karen’s Father in Charleston, SC as well as other friends and family members. In the Florida Keys we visited with boating friends who had recently moved their 65’ Skipjack there for the winter. Eventually we met up with the owner of Air Key West, Robert Valle, at the small Marathon Airport. We left the day of departure up to him. We had a 2-3 day weather window, and he chose the 17th as the best day to make the flight. We were so busy prior to leaving that we forgot it was a holiday.

So on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2004 at about 6:30 am, we loaded the plane with approximately 600 lbs of personal items and boarded the small plane. Karen sat in the co-pilot seat and took pictures, and I looked out the starboard window from the back seat as we flew down the entire length of the chain of Bahamas Islands at an altitude of 5,000 feet.

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Karen and Lee prior to takeoff from the Marathon Airport

(Image courtesy of the Authors, as snapped by Robert Valle, owner of Air Key West)

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It was an awesome clear day as we crossed island after beautiful island on our way down the Bahamas chain to Vieques.

(Image courtesy of the Authors)

On the 10 hour trip, we stopped once to refuel in Cockburn Town, the capital of the Turks and Caicos Islands. As we approached Vieques, Karen asked if we could do a flyover of our house to take pictures. Robert said no. The time was rapidly approaching 5 pm and Customs would not be happy at all, if we arrived at 5:01 pm or later. We arrived at the Vieques airport just before the deadline for the U.S. Customs office. Hurriedly, we loaded all of our belongings and gear onto the airports carts and rushed to the customs office door as it was being closed. Fortunately, they let us in and then gave our stuff an obligatory poke and sniff, and then ushered us out the door into the public side of the terminal. The agent was in a hurry to close the office for the day and leave.

As a side note, while waiting for customs to inspect our baggage, we asked Robert where he was going to stay that night. He said he was just waiting for us to clear Customs and then he was headed to St Croix for a few days. We did not know it at the time, but Robert was raised in St Croix, where he learned to fly and eventually worked for locally owned airlines, building up his hours of flying experience. So he was very familiar with Vieques, as well as all of the surrounding islands. Our charter fee of $5,200 provided him with the means and opportunity to spend St Patrick’s Day with friends and family on his home island of St Croix.

It was with a sense of relief and gratitude that we realized we had made it. Now the adventure, excitement, and challenge of living full time in the tropics would begin.

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Isla Nena – Its Location, Attractions, and a Brief History

Location

Vieques is a Caribbean Island located 6 miles off the east coast Puerto Rico. Administratively, Vieques is a Puerto Rican municipality, but geographically, it could be a U.S. Virgin Island. On a clear day, it is within sight of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Vieques is approximately 20 miles long and 4.5 miles wide. With a surface area of 51 square miles, it is roughly twice the land mass of Manhattan.

The name Vieques is derived from the Taino name for the island, Bieque, which means island or small land. The island of Vieques also has the nickname Isla Nena, usually translated from Spanish as Little Girl Island, alluding to its perception as Puerto Rico's little sister. During the colonial period, its British name was Crab Island.

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Vieques lies just off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, separated by the Vieques Passage

(Image courtesy of https://annexx51.wordpress.com/pr-101/puerto-rico-maps/puerto-rico-map-physical)

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Puerto Rico is in the Antilles chain that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea

(Image courtesy of Google Maps)

Geography and Climate

The topography of the island includes hills, small valleys, and coastal plains. The highest point, located in the western part of Vieques, is Mount Pirata, which is 910 feet above sea level. The second-highest point is the Matías peak at 440 feet on the east end.

The island has a tropical marine climate with minimal fluctuations in temperature. The trade winds blow directly over the island, moderating the temperatures, which average 79° F. Annual precipitation ranges from 25 inches in the east to 45 inches in the west. The wettest months are October through December and the driest are March through May. Because of its limited rainfall, Vieques does not have a permanent system of rivers.

Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 73°F to 88°F and is rarely below 70°F or above 90°F.

The temperature in Vieques varies so little throughout the year that it is not entirely meaningful to discuss hot and cold seasons.

(Image courtesy of https://weatherspark.com)

Vieques has several springs and streams, although they are not sufficient to provide water for the island. In the town is the urban stream, which produces a small cascade during rainfall. There are also lagoons, such as the Kianí, Playa Grande and Yanuel.

Average water temperatures in San Juan, Puerto Rico Copyright © 2018 www.weather-and-climate.com

The monthly mean water temperature over the year in Vieques, Puerto Rico

(Image courtesy of https://weather-and-climate.com)

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Click Image to open an interactive Vieques Island