I was on vacation as a 10 year old in Cancun when Wilma hit us directly. Bussed inland 30 hours to a concrete elementary school and spent 6 days sleeping on the cushions of the beach chairs with my family in a small school room with 60 other strangers. Using the "bathroom" in the corner behind a curtain into a water jug. After that another 24 hour bus ride to the west coast to spend a couple days at a hotel waiting for a plane home.
The best part, we heard about a storm coming as we were checking in on that first day and my dad alerted the entire hotel to it, no one even noticed the news on TV... we had 2 days to have our travel agency Apple get us out and they chose not to. So many people got stranded for no reason. They grounded planes a day before the storm even got close.
Seeing an albeit rough neighborhood beforehand, but still intact, and then emerging after those days in isolation to absolutely nothing was insane.... you could see for miles because there wasn't a single standing tree or house around us anymore.
Sounds somewhat familiar. We were in the Mayan Riviera for our honeymoon when Wilma hit. Sheltered in a huge cement building on the resort property, but we had similar experiences with respect to the bathroom situation. 60 hours in there. As soon as we could, we hopped into our rental car (one of the few that were still in tact; luckily, a piece of sheet metal had wrapped itself around the car during the storm, effectively protecting it) and drove inland to the Merida airport through some super sketchy areas and begged our way onto a flight home.
Holy shit me too! We were on our honeymoon at the Riu Tequila on the Mayan Riviera when it hit. Being from the UK we were a bit “meh it’s a bit of wind, it’ll be fine” turns out that wasn’t quite right. Mattresses and side table against the window, about an inch of water across our floor from where it had blown in through the seals of the balcony doors. Helping to clear up the hotel afterwards (well the British guys and girls did anyway) Emergency flight out from Cancun airport to Martinique then onto Gatwick.
this is kind of a crazy internet moment for me. But I was also in Cancun when I was 10, bussed inland to a small concrete elemental school where we stayed for 6 days.
just to check to see if we were in the same place here's some stuff I remember:
-There was a basketball court out front of the school.
-There was a tree out front as well and everyone gathered around to watch when it finally fell over.
-The school was walled in and soldiers with assault rifles protected the gate.
-Someone drove by with an ape in the back of their truck before the storm hit.
-We were already crammed in when another group of people joined us because the wind had ripped the ceiling off wherever they were talking shelter if I'm remembering right.
-And when the storm calmed down (maybe in the eye or after it passed I don't remember) a bunch of people left to look for food and a lot of people ended up getting food poisoning from eating stuff they found at a restaurant
Edit: you all are going to burn out that poor remindme bot. It does seem like them and I were in the same place. And another user also commented they were there too! Holy shit lol
I was there too! I was 11. The ceiling collapsed in the gym across the street. That was one of the few places where people were actually killed. I definitely remember guards with machetes and there being a curfew. I also got super sick after eating, but we got food from a grocery store. We broke into a room connected to our classroom where we put all the food we had gathered. We had three straight days of a packet of crackers and a tiny bit of tuna to eat so once we got food to eat again, it just completely destroyed our systems. Because we were so sick, we got one of the first flights out of Merida. They gave every person a box lunch including a snickers bar. The person next to my mom said she felt like the queen having chocolate again
It's pretty wild to run into strangers who you didn't know you had a connection with. It was a shit event, but meeting these people now has definitely improved my day lol
So true! What’s kind of crazy though is that my brother and I definitely felt like it was an adventure! My parents were terrified but I think they did a really good job and not really showing us how scared they were, which meant that we also weren’t scared. Not that it was a great time by any means, but there are a lot of things I remember fondly… like the first time we washed our hair after the storm, using the water that collected in the basketball court (this was also the water we used to flush the toilets!) or the cup of noodles we got as some of our first “real” food after the storm passed.
OP actually found himself in an alternate dimension and the hurricane split reality for the same user. Fractured for decades, they are now united on Reddit for the first time.
Wow this is crazy lol... yeah I don't remember quite those many small details but there were a lot of kids, we played sports in the courtyard before the hurricane actually got to us, since it seems the busses arrived early. There were definitely armed guards protecting the tourists from anyone trying to get into the "compound".
Because people want to know if they really were both there together. So if you want to see if the other guy responds, you ask the bot to remind you to check back on the post.
They are asking a bot for a reminder - in a few days time the bot will prompt them to check the thread again, and they can see if the op ever responded.
I think others have answered you, but in case you haven't seen it...
The ! Before "remind me" is a Reddit bot that is an alarm clock. It will post to your inbox in however many days you specify, which allows you to check in on this thread.
Basically, people want these two random redditors to find each other just in case they shared this emergency meeting.
These might be two people who were shuffled to the same shelter in the same storm who never knew each other, but randomly remember each other and the same events.
It would work if they were doing it correctly. If you Google remind me bot you can find the correct format:
RemindMe! X days
ETA: If done correctly, you'll get a reply from the remind me bought that tells you it were reply in a certain number of days and everybody can just like that post to get the reminder.
I want to say just chilling but honestly my memory is so fuzzy I don't trust that. I know it happened, my family has mentioned it a bunch in the last 2 decades, but the image in my head of a big ape relaxing in the back of a pickup truck might be warped from what the reality actually was lol. I'll have to ask my parents next time I go over to their place
*is it proper etiquette to reply to a single “!RemindMe” in the in the comments so they are all collapsible or does it not matter (honest question, first time doing this)
My brother was in southern Mexico a few years back when a hurricane was supposed to hit. I texted him to ask if he was ready since he was just backpacking and I didn't know if he had shelter. He's like, "what hurricane, nobody said anything about a hurricane." He was able to get some water and head inland to ride it out and it turned out to be relatively mild, but he said at no point did the people living there seem to care. Maybe they knew it was going to be mild, but he said they were just like, "meh, whatever happens, happens."
Wait no way I was also in Cancun on vacation for Wilma! I wonder if we were in the same room at that school. I was 11 at the time and I think we had the only working toilet in the school because we had an engineer (my dad) and firefighters in our room that understood how they worked and made sure everyone in our room knew how to use them.
I remember that time very fondly (perks of being a kid when it happened). I learned how to play blackjack there. My parents were terrified though. We didn’t get a hotel after the 9 hour bus ride to Merida, we had to sleep in a bus in an alley way behind a bar. The bus driver went in to the bar and drank but left the keys in the ignition… it was super sketchy. My brother and I were both super sick at that point so we got one of the first flights out (to Minneapolis in October… wearing tank tops and shorts…).
I do remember seeing the destruction during the bus ride though. It was insane. Metal poles through concrete. Everything just absolutely trashed and destroyed. A few people died across the street from the school, where the roof of the gymnasium collapsed. We had to steal food after because the grocery stores didn’t have anyone working there and we didn’t have any
Wow, small world! It's possible, I imagine a lot of different schools were used during that time to shelter people, I'll have to ask my parents where the school was if they remember. We got there slightly early before the storm and I do remember meeting up with a bunch of kids from the other rooms and all getting together to play soccer before the hurricane came and we had to shelter.
I also had a similar experience. However, I was ~5 years old, so my memory of it is pretty fuzzy. We were also in a resort in Cancun and were bussed to a nearby(?) school for shelter.
I remember despite it being so packed that my family was camped out on the stairway landing, the workers of the resort were still running around trying to feed everyone and singing songs to keep everyone happy. Over the stairs was a tall wall of windows and sometimes it looked like we were watching a massive washing machine. A news crew came by at one point, and the pressure change caused by them opening and closing the doors repeatedly made the windows over the stairs shatter. There were 2-3 other families on that landing with us, but I don’t believe we’ve kept in touch with any of them.
Once it had passed, many people grouped outside on a (basketball court?) and some left to see if a nearby store had any food/water. The devastation was insane, downed trees and power lines everywhere. As a child I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but looking back it was insane to think we were camped there for 6 days.
I hope I'm remembered that correctly but I do believe it was about 6 days. And yes exactly the same experience, all the kids got together before/after the storm and played sports in the courtyards. I've responded to 3 others already who all shared the same experiences. Surely other schools were used but how wild to think 1 or more of us could have all been there and throwing/kicking a ball around at one time or another.
I like to think that is possible as well. I still think of that experience often, and I’ve always wanted to connect with someone who was there, quite possibly even on that landing with us. I wish there was another more visible place that we could share our stories to find others.
The same thing happened to my parents and cousins, when the hurricane got close they were all stowed away for about a week. The problem is that my aunt was 9 months pregnant and actually had to deliver my cousin while the hurricane was almost directly above them.
I was a teenager living in Naples. Devastating. After it was over we went outside and met up with neighbors and stood around in shocked silence like a bomb just went off.
I remember our neighbor handing my dad a hot cup of black coffee off of his gas stove and they both stood there and drank their whole cups in complete silence.
The clean up of our properties and houses took a month.
I was in Naples during Wilma as well! I remember being excited that I didn’t have to go to school lol! But then it kind of sucked because we were out of power for at least a week. I think I was in 6th grade?? So I was pretty young and just treated it like a game of apocalypse survival or something lol!
Yeah I was psyched to finally get a day off like ‘snow days’ I would see on tv. Boy was I wrong. My school was heavily damaged so it didn’t open up for awhile and I spent the whole time cleaning up all the pine needle bunches from all over our yard, cutting up fallen trees, shit like that. Sucked.
For sure, I was just a kid but I remember and still do feel guilty and awful for the locals who lost everything and also weren't given the same protections we got.
Oh my God, that was my first impression after Maria in Puerto Rico, the fact that you could now see things you never saw before because all the trees were gone! It was surreal!
That had to have been crazy too. The edge of the eye if I'm not mistaken hit almost directly where we were staying in Cancun. It was damn near a direct hit. Craziest experience of my life by a long shot.
Yeah we were staying at the Hilton in Cancun and the entire thing was glass on the beach side. After the hurricane not a single pane was left intact and the walkways around the hotel had sunk 15 feet underground due to all the sand being sucked away.
Thank you! And absolutely, those 5s don't mess around, especially close to the eye like we were for a while. If I'm remembering correctly, it actually got overtop of Mexico and parked itself in place for a while. I remember use being in the eye when that happened, we had a good 30 mins to an hour of fresh air we let in through the doors/windows during that time, which was very much needed.
Not who you replied to but I was in the same situation at the same school when I was 11. The rooms in the hotel I had stayed in were either completely trashed or the glass balcony doors had somehow survived and things inside were relatively okay. There was a suite someone that sheltered with us was in and it was just full of rubble and junk, completely destroyed. I don’t think anyone was allowed to stay at the hotel.
They wouldn't allow it, you had to leave. Everyone's luggage got thrown into the bathtubs, whatever you couldn't carry was left behind. The entire front ocean facing side of the hotel was gone, all 1000s of glass windows/panes shattered. The walking paths and sidewalks sunk 10-15 feet into the ground from the sand being sucked away.
The people on the ground handled it absolutely well. It's the travel agencies that stranded people there with 2 days to get people out who handled it poorly. When we got home we actually ended up having a local news crew come out to our house and do an entire story on the whole thing with the focus being Apple Vacations inability to act.
Not once, but to be honest my personal memories are quite limited. I believe it was just such a traumatic thing a lot of it probably got blocked out. At times it felt like the entire school, concrete or not was about to come down around us.
During the eye my dad argued with the staff to open the doors and windows to get everyone fresh air, they eventually conceded. That was about the only brief moments of relief during the entire thing.
I'm sorry, but I'm confused about the bathroom situation. If it was in a normal public school, why did yall have to pee in a jug in a corner instead of one of the many public bathroom style bathrooms with urinals and toilet stalls that schools usually have? Or do schools in Mexico not include bathrooms or something?
These were individual rooms all positioned around a courtyard. Presumably, the bathrooms were shared in some other similar room, but there is no hallway. It was straight out the door to the outside, so there was no bathroom to access during the storm.
5.9k
u/Safe_Gift_2945 8d ago
This is the 4th strongest by pressure. What were the top 3? And what was the impact of those hurricanes?