Twenty years ago last Saturday, 22 September 2018, the Dominican Republic, especially the East and South, was devastated by Hurricane Georges. Reporters of Diario Libre interviewed several people about their recollections of this hurricane that killed nearly 300 people and caused severe damage to the country’s economy, farming and the nation’s infrastructure including bridges, houses, schools, streets and avenues.
Paola Sanchez, was 13 years old and living in the town of Tamayo, in Bahoruco province in the Deep South. This area was practically buried by the mud carried in the runoff of the rains and took months to get back on its feet. Paola told the reporters that “where ever there was a roof, there were people.”
She went on to say: “We knew a hurricane was coming, but we were very poorly informed. We didn’t expect that the impact would be that strong. I was frightened when it got so dark and it was only two in the afternoon when it began to rain. I remember that the rain never stopped. About 10 the next morning, the rumors were that the dam above the town was overflowing and they were going to have to open the floodgates to relieve the pressure and nobody knew if this was real. But when a lot of people came running from up the river we realized that they were really going to open those floodgates and it happened so fast that when the water began to flow and I crossed the street from my house to a building called La Torre, which is four stories tall, the water almost took me away as I crossed the street.
“I was the only one in my house across the street because they didn’t want to leave my grandmother alone and she said she wasn’t going to leave her house. And when I went upstairs and just a question of minutes the town began to be flooded at a speed that no one could believe. My grandmother was taken out of the house in a chair that they put on a table, and when they couldn’t continue in this way because the water was reaching her, they went into the backyard where they were building a bathroom, as small concrete surface with a small roof and there were like 15 persons including my grandmother, my father and my uncles on top that roof. This little building was the only safe roof that they could reach quickly.
“It never stopped raining. They were there for hours, we’re talking about like from 6 o’clock in the afternoon. All night they were there getting wet in the rain. From the fourth floor of the building across the street I could see the entire town, there were no tall constructions, I was in the tallest one. There were people in the trees. In the park there is a bandstand and there were people on top of it and on top of any roof that was made of concrete.”
In other areas, such as La Romana, the Casa de Campo Hotel many villas lost roofs, and the destruction in San Pedro de Macoris was huge.
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Diario Libre
25 September 2018
