With the reopening of the Edward Bodden Airfield on Little Cayman, visitors on the island are being evacuated via Cayman Brac.
Marzeta Bodden, of the Department of Tourism, confirmed to the Compass Thursday morning that Twin Otter flights were leaving Little Cayman with visitors and other evacuees and ferrying them across to Cayman Brac, where DoT representatives are on the ground ready to meet them.
Many of these visitors then boarded Cayman Airways jet flights to Grand Cayman where, according to Bodden, “The DoT has organised ground transportation to hotels on Grand Cayman and preferential rates at these hotels for the visitors.”
More than 100 tourists rode out the direct hit from Category 1 Hurricane Rafael in Little Cayman. With trees and power poles down in the roads and no electricity on Wednesday, many of the visitors were anxious to get off the island.
Andrea Virguez, a visitor from North Carolina, speaking to the Compass as she readied to board a Cayman Airways flight off the island on Thursday afternoon, said she’d had a very challenging time on the night of the hurricane, in her room at the Southern Cross Club.
“I was on my own in the room and the wind was so strong, and it was loud. It was dark and the whole room was shaking and I could hear things hitting against the roof. The window suddenly blew open and I couldn’t close it.
“I hid under a mattress but it got wet from the rain,” she said.
She moved into the bathroom but couldn’t close the door, she said, so tried tying it shut with a shoelace. She ended up hiding under the mattress in the bathroom for several hours and felt “very scared”, she added.
Isabel and Boyd Chatman from North Carolina, who had been staying at the Southern Cross Club, were among the tourists that arrived in Grand Cayman from Little Cayman, via the Brac, on Thursday. Isabel told the Compass, the treatment they had received was “excellent considering what we had all gone through”.
Boyd added, “Mike from the dive shop took charge and the team at Southern Cross were amazing and made sure they had food.”
He said there were some projectiles and the fan came down in their room during the height of the storm at around midnight.
Despite it all, they were still smiling as they boarded the Majestic Tours bus that was taking them them to the Hampton Inn and Suites.
Another tourist arriving on Grand Cayman from Little, Lee Ann Andrews from Boise, Idaho, said it had been “a crazy experience”. She said she had appreciated that people had come to the airport in Little Cayman with food for the displaced travellers and that Department of Tourism representatives were at the airport in Grand Cayman to greet them.
This was her first experience of a hurricane, she said.
“They had us shelter in place in our room and the wind was very loud during the night, but everything was OK,” she added, as she trundled her suitcase across the ground towards a waiting bus.
Robert Purifoy, owner of Olympus Dive Center, who led a visiting dive group to Little Cayman from North Carolina, told the Compass at the island’s airport on Thursday, “Everyone is ready to go. We had four days of good diving before Hurricane Rafael but we are looking forward to being in Grand Cayman,” he said.
Cayman Airways provided 150 seats in scheduled shuttle flights from Little Cayman to Cayman Brac, and onward to Grand Cayman, to transport residents and visitors off the island, according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism on Thursday evening.
It said additional flights would be added if necessary, to accommodate anyone else on island who wished to leave, particularly until electricity and internet services have been restored.
According to reports from a worker at one of the hotels on Little Cayman, strong winds during Hurricane Rafael blew out the windows in some of the guest units during the night, and due to continuing inclement weather the following day, which caused flights to be cancelled, the visitors were forced to remain on the island.
Flights were able to resume on Thursday, with the single Twin Otter plane in operation – the other two are undergoing maintenance – ferrying passengers to the Charles Kirkconnell International Airport on the Brac.
Speaking to the Compass late on Thursday morning, Jennifer Mills, general manager at the Southern Cross Club, said most of the tourists at the hotel were now either at the airport in Little Cayman or had already caught a flight over to the Brac.
She confirmed that the “guests were relieved to be leaving”. However, she added that “despite not having power last night, the kitchen did an incredible job and they were able to deliver food to the guests in their rooms”.
She said the visitors who were staying at Southern Cross during Hurricane Rafael were part of a dive group, and they had been accompanied by a dive leader who had formerly worked in Little Cayman.
Mills was unable to state when the resort would be back up and running as usual because it was only now beginning to do a detailed assessment of the property.
“The dive boat was still stranded on the beach,” she said. “However, crews were working to quickly clear the debris and restore power,” adding she hoped it would be business as usual within a few weeks.
One of Southern Cross’ boats, Lucky Lady, was blown onto the beach during the storm.
Island Energy has been steadily restoring power in increments on the island.
By Wednesday night, the company said power was available from its plant through the north coast and around the island to the airport, Hungry Iguana, Paradise Villas and the Village Square store and apartments.
In an update Thursday morning, it said crews would be focusing on supplying power up to Southern Cross Club, including the Little Cayman Beach Resort and Spot Bay Road.
It added that the crews would be tackling the eastern portion of the island on Friday, including the rest of the north coast and the south coast through Kingston Bight.
Check back for more on this story.
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