A North London couple who were caught in the eye of Hurricane Melissa as it struck Jamaica have described the “apocalyptic” aftermath of the storm.Carl and Kate Pheasant have been blocked in their Sandals resort in Whitehouse since Sunday night.
00:00The buildings are very much destroyed, the pools are destroyed.
00:03I don't know how much work that's going to take to clear it out.
00:06And there's a huge pool over there.
00:08We knew there was a hurricane on the way.
00:10We knew there was a storm on the way.
00:12We knew there was a storm on the way.
00:14So as it was getting closer and closer and the storm was still coming,
00:17we were kind of like, well, we haven't been formally told not to go.
00:22So we were always going to go, otherwise our insurance wouldn't kick in.
00:26Unless somebody cancels something, we don't get insurance, so we're going.
00:29So at the last minute, we were like, yeah, okay, then, you know, it's not the end of the world.
00:36So we'll go.
00:37And off we went, and we got onto a very full plane on Friday morning, absolutely capacity.
00:45It looked like an awful lot of people of Jamaican origin, maybe they came back to see families,
00:48I don't know, go for the holidays.
00:50Yeah, half-turn, you know, so coming back to families.
00:53But it was full.
00:55So it's not just us in this situation of coming over here, you know, just with a hurricane about to hit.
01:01It must be a storm because no authorities have said, don't go.
01:06None of them.
01:06You don't appreciate the terrifying power of Mother Nature until she shows you a dark side.
01:13And by God, this is a dark side.
01:15I, you know, they say, oh, a hurricane, and you just think there are strong winds and a bit of rain.
01:19And I was even joking about that, wind and rain.
01:22When the guys working here said, oh, yeah, yeah, it's a bit of wind and rain.
01:25Oh, my God, it's not that.
01:26Now, these are the buildings.
01:28I mean, you have to be able to look in a bit closer.
01:30You see, there's, the roofs have gone.
01:33Yeah.
01:33The roofs have gone.
01:35The shingles.
01:36And this side is shingles, this particular area.
01:40Now, what they did was they moved us here.
01:43There's the pool.
01:44The main pool is filled with the debris.
01:46With the roofs blown off, the water started leaking in and coming in over all the electrics.
01:51And so this is during the heart of the storm.
01:52There's nothing they can do about it.
01:54So I was, we were sweeping up towel after towel after towel and mopping up the water, which was dripping down through the electrics, which is very dangerous.
02:04And then what they did after the storm, they then moved us quite quickly down to a ground floor, which wasn't leaking.
02:12It looked like it had leakage into the room, but they cleared that out.
02:16But at least the electrics are dry, even if the floor's a bit down.
02:19So we won't get electrocuted.
02:20So we won't get electrocuted, but we feel a lot more secure in this room.
02:23Some people had windows blowing.
02:26And Kate was talking to some people earlier on who actually got cuts from glass from the window breaking and flying in at them.
02:32So, you know, it's real risky.
02:34And we were lucky.
02:35We were really lucky.
02:37Sunday night was the last meal out in the resort in Bankside.
02:41We had our meal, had to be in our room by 10.
02:44And then we were locked in our room and they said, at 9 o'clock, send us a message.
02:49You can go out until 10 o'clock in the morning on Monday.
02:53And it just did not stop getting more serious.
02:56It just built and built until you just could not believe it anymore.
03:00You just, it was hard to fathom just how severe this was.
03:05And you were not able to see outside.
03:07So like I said, the window was just over here.
03:08We just stayed in the room by air.
03:09You couldn't see out the window.
03:10Our balcony was, for that first wave, very well protected.
03:16Because we had like the wall facing into the wind.
03:20And the balcony door was a very long way back.
03:22Well set back from the end of the balcony.
03:25Great.
03:25Until we went through the eye and the winds were now hitting us in the other direction.
03:29Now, we were getting that full force into our balcony.
03:32Now, it was terrifying.
03:34Actually, we're having problems with water supply at the moment.
03:36But during the hell on earth, they've bought us plenty of food.
03:42They've bought us to fill up the glass with water.
03:44And the glass is part of the prep.
03:45Yeah.
03:46Yeah.
03:46And they've bought us loads of water, sodas, everything.
03:52Food.
03:53The devastation around it and the amount of care they put into their customers.
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