‘We had cars flying over our head’: traumatised Caribbeans describe surreal scenes of Irma’s wrath
‘What we experienced is like something you see in a horror movie, not something you expect to actually happen in reality’
“We had cars flying over our head, we had 40ft containers flying left and right,” said Knacyntar Nedd, chairwoman of the Barbuda council. “People were literally tying themselves to roofs with ropes to hold them down.”
As Hurricane Irma blasted across the Caribbean in an arc of horror and destruction on Thursday, killing at least 10 and wreaking near-total devastation on islands at the eye of the storm, victims recalled a night of misery that exceeded even their worst fears.
The trail of damage in areas first hit by the storm’s 300km/h winds served as grim warning for those further west as they braced for its arrival hours or days later, with its intensity barely dimmed.
Barely a single Barbudan building escaped undamaged, around a quarter of properties were utterly obliterated, and half the population was left homeless by the storm.
