Heather in Paradise » hurricane

By popular demand, here is how to help in Majahual

heatherinparadise — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:37:04 +0000

A few people have contacted me asking me how they can help with the hurricane relief effort in Majahual. Originally I just linked back to the hurricane assistance thread on www.playa.info but to make it easier for everyone, I thought I would just repost the report I made after our first trip to Majahual just 2 days after Dean destroyed Majahual.

Tony, Cheri, Claudia and I have just now returned to Playa after a long and tiring day. In addition to the 4 of us, there were 6 or 7 other volunteers, and a total of 5 vehicles convoying down south to Majahual to bring the donated supplies we’d collected in the last day to give to those hit hardest by Hurricane Dean. This was not an official Red Cross visit; while Claudia volunteers for them, this was a mission from her heart arranged to immediately get supplies to those who most needed them. She will report her findings and photographs of the damage to the Red Cross tonight, who will hopefully be assisting with relief efforts very soon (as we all know now, this has yet to happen, although the Red Cross has been collecting money for victims of Dean).

Since Majahual is such a long drive from us (I think it took us around 3.5 or so hours, maybe more), we didn’t see any hurricane damage for a long time, so I don’t think any of us were truly prepared for what we saw when we arrived. They could not have been hit harder. None of us had ever seen Majahual before, sadly, so we had nothing to compare to, but it wasn’t difficult to see that this town looks RADICALLY different from the way it looked just 3 days ago. The people there have lost everything. Their homes, their clothes, furniture, their businesses…everything.

Still, the town was a hive of activity. The Army was busy cleaning up trees and clearing the streets and all the locals buzzed around cleaning up debris and clearing the land. We set up “camp” in a couple of locations and started dividing up the donations we had, non-perishable food items, drinking water, clothing, candles, and more. Our plan was to get what we had to the people immediately, assess what else was needed, and return to Majahual this Saturday to bring more supplies.

Despite all of this incredible destruction, no one was sitting and weeping. No one was bitter or complaining. When the people of the town gathered around us to receive the donations, they were not grasping or taking more than they needed for a day or two. They carefully chose items of clothing and suggested to others around them items that would suit their needs. One man came to ask Cheri if he could please have one t-shirt, as he had been wearing the same one for 4 days. If I say any more about this right now, I’m going to cry and I have to get this finished tonight.

So much more is needed. We saw people filling up bottles of water from a stagnant swamp. We didn’t have enough supplies for everyone. Tomorrow, Tony and Cheri will use the money that has been donated to buy as many needed items as they can. Beans, rice, tortillas, water, etc.

Please, if you can give even one dollar to help, your generosity will be put to such good purpose. Every single penny of your donations will go DIRECTLY into the lives of the people of Majuhual and the surrounding villages. We are paying for ALL of our own expenses, including gasoline and our own food and water. There is absolutely NO overhead.

To donate money via paypal, go to www.paypal.com and click on the “send money” tab.

The paypal email account to use is:
helpthechicas@lunabluehotel.com (We are using the same paypal account we used for Alex & Mayte’s accident, since it’s already set up).

We are going back to Majahual on Saturday with as many supplies and volunteers as we can get. If you have any donations, monetary or otherwise, please bring them to Luna Blue hotel on Calle 26 between 5th and 10th avenues.

Needed items include:
- Roofing material, cardboard, triple, construction material
- Water, juice
- Non perishable food
- Medicines
- Clothes and shoes in good shape
- Blankets, mattresses and pillows
- Diapers and baby products
- Powdered milk
- Utensils, shovels, machetes…etc.

We were so lucky here in Playa del Carmen and the Riviera Maya that we received no damage from this devastating storm, but my joy and relief is certainly tempered by the compassion I feel for the unfortunate areas that did.

I don’t think that I will ever be able to convey to you what I saw today or how it has moved me. I will leave the photographs to tell Majahual’s sad story (and these are just a handful of the photographs.

For my mom

heatherinparadise — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:42:05 +0000

I wanted to post pictures of our house so my mom can see for herself that we are in a nice, solid, concrete house. We have only 2 windows in the front, one small window by the door, and an entire wall of sliding glass doors in the back (that Michael is cursing). We have the iron bars on the windows, which are hurricane protectors, but also make it very difficult to put boards up around them. Michael has put support 2x4s around the windows so he can nail the boards in today. The hurricane, by all reports, will hit about 100 miles south of us, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have some strong winds. Plus, there’s no certainty it won’t change track and come north, so we’ll be safe.Today, oddly, is an incredibly beautiful day. The sun is very bright and it’s amazingly calm. Most stores and homes are boarded up and the streets are quiet. No one is panicking. Local Mayans, who live in the jungle in stick/thatch huts, typically will go either to a shelter or into a nearby cenote (cave). The Maya have been dealing with hurricanes for centuries and have survived, so I think they know what they are doing.

It’s funny how shabby my house looks in these photos, when I look at them with another person’s eyes. We were so happy when we found this “fancy” house. Not many people here are as lucky as we are.

We’re exhausted

heatherinparadise — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:31:25 +0000

Here is Michael yesterday, when he was still somewhat cheerful about all the work he had to do.

I sure do love a man who knows how to use power tools.

Here are the condos across the street from our house:

Sara, Steve, and Michael during The Last Supper yesterday:

Colin and Doodle, full and tired after The Last Supper. Doodle happens to be Franky’s sister, but Franky is mean to her:

My dogs are so hard to take pictures of. They always move. Here is Ms. Lavinia, aka Vinnie:

Here’s blurry Franky, about to walk out of the frame:

Franky acts like HE is the one who had a hard day and deserves a beer!

Here is my family:

“Ridin’ the Storm Out”

Bring it on, bastard, we’re ready. I just hope the poor people of the Yucatan are, too. Somebody bring me a shot of tequila.

Still looking good for Playa

heatherinparadise — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:04:40 +0000

The models are tracking south of us now. Dean seems to be threatening Chetumal now, which is the capital of Quintana Roo and a big city with lots of people. Ideally, I’d like the hurricane to come in a bit north, between Chetumal and Playa, through the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, where virtually no people live. It would minimize the potential loss of human life.

The hurricane seems to be moving more slowly, scheduled to hit here around 2 am on Tuesday. We’re so prepared, we’re now actually looking for stuff to do. Ok, I’ll be honest–I’m looking for stuff to do. Michael is outside drilling holes into cement that he’ll screw the boards into sometime tomorrow. The lion’s share of work in preparing for this hurricane has certainly fallen upon him. I’ve just organized, shopped, pre-cooked some food, etc. Sucks to be a guy!

It looks like Jamaica dodged a big bullet. I was really worried about them there, as from news reports it seemed most people weren’t taking it seriously. It could still get ugly for them, but I’m wishing hard that this bastard turns out to be all mouth and no trousers.

Dean Model update

heatherinparadise — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:05:00 +0000

Still early yet, but all the models except one seem to have shifted a bit south. I’m hoping they shift a tiny bit more south so it might hit a less-populated area (though please let it not hit Honduras, where people are even more poor and living in very flimsy homes). Michael and I are resigned to another big storm, though, and would rather be safe than sorry. He picked up the plywood for the windows today already and we’re going tonight to shop for the other sundries so I don’t have to wait in a line as long as the one I waited in 2 years ago. This time we’ll be staying in our house by ourselves, so no hurricane parties (that was the fun part, though!), but this storm is predicted to be fast moving, so hopefully it won’t be too long until things will be back to normal. For Wilma, it took our street 2 weeks to get power back, we were the last street in all of Playa.

Although it sucks, I have to say that in the past 2 hurricanes, Playa was super lucky and had very superficial damage and recovered quickly. I have no reason to think it will be otherwise this time, but if we have another bad High Season, I know quite a few people who’ll be leaving Playa. Bummer