The electricity was still on ( the wall air conditioning unit was still running) and so I knew that the storm had not reached its peak of intensity, yet. I tossed and turned, listening to the storm rage, thinking about family, saying prayer after prayer. Then, at 2:55 AM, the air conditioning unit cut off. I knew that the island had cut off the electricity and that Hurricane Wilma had arrived in all her fury.
It was so loud! The wind was howling; the rain was pounding; the doors were banging. I kept putting my fingers in my ears so that I wouldn’t hear it. Al, who had been sleeping up until this point, was bothered by the doors banging and got up to check out the situation. Ever the engineer, he tore a piece of cardboard from a book we had in the room and wedged it in the wood door frame and, alleluia, the banging from that source ceased!
I looked out the window and it was so totally dark and dense. You couldn’t see anything except water flying and something swaying toward us. It was the palm trees in the courtyard and they seemed to be bowing before our window.
The night went on so slowly. I checked my watch with my small flashlight every fifteen minutes or so. Fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity. Al slept on! (And to think, when we were first married, he was the light sleeper!!!)
I must have slept some, because about 6 AM or so, I awoke to some semblance of the first light (if you could call it that) and got up to check the balcony. I pulled the curtains and was aghast to see at least six – eight inches of water on the floor of the balcony. Our balcony was a step up from our room and so the water from the balcony was seeping under the sliding glass door and coming over the step onto the floor of our room. Already the floor was wet. Water was also coming in under the other door leading to our outside staircase. I yelled for Al and we got to work on the water.
Thus began the routine that dominated most of the morning: trying to control the rising water on the balcony We would sop up the water with towels, ring the water from the towels into an ice bucket (the only container we had to us); and dump the water into the shower stall. It didn't take us too long to realize that this was a losing battle. The water was coming faster than we could dispose of it. Al had to get out on the balcony and bail some of that water over the rail.
He put on a rain slicker and we opened the sliding glass door. I was afraid he would be blown away (we figured the winds must be 145 mph), but he was able to stay low and begin the bailing process.
In the midst of all this, there was a knock at the door. I couldn't believe it. Who was out in this? I opened the door to find Bill and Anaka, drenched, but otherwise fine. They were checking up on everyone and came to us specifically to get the room list that Al had made up the day before. They brought us news of nocturnal events. Kim and Alan had about 6 inches of water on the floor inside their room. Sue and Meg, who were in one of the ground level rooms adjacent to the water, had waves crashing against their window and “escaped” to Shirley and Mike’s room, also ground level, but more protected back by the dive shop. Others in our group seemed to be doing well. Bill helped Al bail more water off our balcony and then he and Anaka left.
I kept sopping up the water, wringing, dumping. Al went out to do more bailing. The water kept pouring in. It became evident that the balcony drain was clogged and needed to be opened - but there was nothing in our room to clear the clogged pipe. (Al would have sold his soul for a metal hanger at that point, but there were only plastic hangars in the room). We remembered that a staff member was staying in one of the rooms and Al thought that he might have some sort of a tool that we could use to clear the drain. Al decided to make a run for it and find him. I didn’t feel good about him being out in the storm, but we really didn’t have a choice. He ventured out in the storm and I was left alone, continuing to sop up the water on the floor with a now very-wet towel.
Al returned pretty soon with Edgar to help dislodge whatever was blocking the drain. When their combined efforts to clear the drain failed, Edgar climbed up on the balcony railing in 145 mph winds, straddled it, and with Al and another staff member holding on to him, kicked the piping below with his foot until it came loose, broke off and the water could pass through. This solved the problem and Edgar was our hero!
There were still about four inches of water on the balcony floor. The ice bucket wasn't working well enough as bailing tool, and so Edgar yelled in that he needed a towel. I threw one out and he and Al used the towel (holding it by all four ends) to scoop up the water and toss it over the balcony. That worked really well and pretty soon the water was down.
Edgar left to help someone else and Al and I decided that it was time for something to eat. We were really trying to conserve food, so we ate the second half of the dinner from the night before, along with a little water. We really didn't know how long we were going to be confined to our room with only the food that we had.
After eating, I laid down on the bed for a moment, only to feel a drip of water on my face. Now where was that coming from? Looking up, I saw that there was a stream of water going across the ceiling dripping on to the bed from the wall air conditioner. Another challenge, but this one wasn't too bad. Al stuffed wash clothes around the openings, and the water stopped.
Speaking of water, it seemed to be everywhere on the floor. Some sources were obvious (from under the wood door; under the balcony door), but others were more mysterious. For example, there was water on the floor between our bed and the inside wall. It wasn't coming from anywhere obvious...it was just appearing. We speculated that it actually might be seeping from the concrete walls. Al mentioned that concrete absorbs water. Whatever...it was appearing and we had to sop it up.
When we weren’t bailing or sopping, or plugging cracks, we were sitting and waiting. Our world was pretty small (bedroom and bathroom) and our choice of activities limited. We would go from the chair to the bed; from the bed to the bathroom; from the bathroom to the chair; from the chair to the sliding glass door to peer out. Our location was difficult in that we had no physical connection with any of the other rooms. We were unable to communicate with anyone else and therefore had no idea of what was going on with anybody else. A lot of the time, the storm was so dense and the rain so thick, it was tough to see anything out our sliding glass door except the rain and some swaying palm trees. Occasionally, we would get a glimpse of other people out on their balconies, bailing water like we had been doing. Later on, we learned that John and Jeff had been out around the courtyard taking pictures.
The winds bombarding against our glass doors created such pressure in the room that we could feel it in our ears. We were constantly having to clear them.
At some point, Al went out with his underwater camera and got some pictures of the courtyard area and a little beyond. He had taken to wearing his bathing suit and his dive mask, and dive boots and would have looked pretty comical if it hadn’t been that others were doing the same thing! One thing I learned from this experience… if you are going to be in a Cat 4 hurricane, it is good to be with scuba divers. Not only are they an intrepid group and comfortable with water, they have a lot of equipment that comes I handy during a storm: lots of big flash lights (they use them for night dives), dive boots, masks, first aid kits etc.
Sometime in the afternoon, the winds began to die down a bit. We had been expecting this to happen. It was a sign that the eye of the storm was very close, if not on top of us. More people from our group came out of their rooms and I even ventured out on one of the steps leading from our front door. The area was protected and I could stand on the step and look over to Larry and Darlene’s room. They came to the window and waved. We were visited by several “brave souls” from our group: Jeff and Mike. More and more people were on their balconies looking at the clearing and the damage in the courtyard. Mike was incredulous that the storm was lasting so long. “How long is this going to go on!?” he said, amazed. “I just hope it doesn’t get stuck over here.” That was not a happy thought!
Jeff kept making jokes, asking when Domino’s was going to deliver pizza. I think he was hungry and knew that there would be no dinner coming from the kitchen or anywhere else tonight!
At this point in the afternoon, everybody was pretty sure that we were experiencing the “eye of the storm.” It really did get calm and even a little bright in the distance! I was feeling a little relieved because I thought we were through the worst of it. Boy…was I ever wrong!
After the eye, came the onslaught! The winds started coming from the west, hitting most of the resort directly, and they were roaring! The rain was coming down fiercely. It got dark again. The winds got louder. The rain started swirling. At about 5 PM, Al and I had something to eat (we had ditched the tuna sandwiches, worried about the long time without refrigeration and ate instead some fruit, bread, and cookies from our “stash”). We lit a candle and began watching "The Notebook,” a poignant love story, on Al's laptop. The storm was pretty much raging outside. You really couldn’t see anything at all when you looked out - no lights, no buildings, nothing.
We were ¾ way through the movie when we heard the first sounds of shattering glass and we knew right away what it meant. Someone’s glass door had blown in! Someone fairly close! It was a terrifying thought.
Our glass door was rattling and the wind was howling . We kept on watching the movie (it helped to concentrate on something), when we heard yet another sound of shattering glass -- and then again. More doors blowing in. It was terrifying!
I was pretty freaked out and so we moved our plastic chairs into the bathroom. And there we sat... in the dark...as the "wicked winds from the west" waged their brutal assault on our fortress at Scuba Club Cozumel.
This seemed to go on forever. We kept hearing more glass breaking and more banging. There were other sounds that I couldn’t identify. Time never went so slowly! I would check my watch and it would be 10:00PM; try to close my eyes for a little; check the watch again, and it was only 10:15PM. The room was small; the chairs uncomfortable; and it was impossible to find a position to stretch out.
Finally, Al couldn’t take sitting in the chair anymore, and announced that he thought the door would hold (the lock had broken, but he had put a cable on it to keep it in place) and that he was going out into the room to go to bed. He kept his clothes and shoes on and laid down on top of the bed. I chose to stay in the relative safety of the bathroom
But that got old fast and I couldn’t sleep either. So I came out of the bathroom and laid on the bed for a while. The floor next to the bed was wet; the towel placed next to the bed to absorb the water was soaked ; the linens felt gritty; everything smelled. Al, miraculously, seemed to be sleeping through most of this.
I couldn't stand the smelly bed and I couldn't stand the stiff chair so I went back and forth from one to the other, taking time in between to check on the water level on the balcony to make sure that water wasn't rising from the courtyard. It seemed like the night would never end, but, finally, I, too, succumbed to utter exhaustion and fell asleep.