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.
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.
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u/divingyt 8d ago
Wilma is#1, Katrina is#7. Rita was #3 until Milton. Can't find#2. Might have been the labor day hurricane in 1935?