Coopdog08

Please note that the Key West Port will be reopening 9/24. I'm surprised that it will be this soon... was expecting a few more weeks. St. Thomas may take a few more weeks. St. Maarten possibly a little longer. The point is though, it hasn't been months or years, nor will it be.

SMH, anything to try to get one up..I didn't mention key west btw and I am glad they are open..can't compare what happened in key west to the ports I mentioned. Btw carnival just announced no cruises out of SJ for several weeks, the next three have already been cancelled.

If Air Traffic Controllers can't make it in to work, near the airport. What makes anyone think that there will be a taxi to catch?

 

 

 

 

 

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Jim Edds said he had to drive through knee deep water to get to airport. He said strong storm surge evident in airport area.

Fixed that for you.

 

And while the power grid is down in PR, many places have backup emergency generators, so they are fine on power. Especially the major hotels.

Many major hotels have now closed or will be as they are running out of petro..Jim Edds specifically mentioned the Hyatt place told them they had to leave by 6am this morning.

We shall see. I find it hard to believe that they can dock on Wednesday and there will be people there to embark on a 3-day cruise.

Question...at what point does RC have to sail IF they do arrive for Three day cruise in SJ. It's likely many took the future credit. If 20 people show do they still have to cruise? Can cruise line cancel if not enough people show? Just wondering.

Agreed. We have family in St. Maarten and our cousin says their house was OK but the island is devastated and they are running out of water and food, and the looting was off-the-charts rampant. :(

Do some searches for St Maarten news and you will find info from local papers. It's not good, below are some things I found out.

Around 20% of island has power but what has been fixed is the easier pieces. Hoping to be 60% in 4-6 weeks.

Many people are upset with the gov as they are worried about tourism vs the people there

Looting is bad. They have had hurricanes before but not looting. Many people are worried how this is going to be perceived once they do get hotels etc rebuilt. Some think it will hurt tourism immensely. Very few places are open and the ones not damaged by Irma have been damaged by looters.

Appear the French side is better organized, more united than Dutch side to get recovery going.

As mentioned basic necessities are in major need.

The island stinks, reports of trash piling up in some areas.

I just reread the letter and it is St Croix

Originally posted by lauraodonnell86 This was a post this morning from a real estate company that my husband and I follow in St. Croix.

 

Posting from the states on behalf of Farchette & Hanley: For all those concerned about Kerri and Chris Hanley... all is well! Spoke with them Wednesday night and they are only having connectivity issues following Hurricane Maria.

Overall, St. Croix luckily weathered well. Not nearly the catastrophic level of damage sustained on St. John and areas of St. Thomas from Hurricane Irma.

Here is the initial damage report they have seen or received info about on St. Croix, as many roads are currently impassable with down trees or power lines. We will update as we receive more info:

- Significant debris in streets of Christiansted and Frederiksted, no collapsed buildings

- Federal courthouse has significant roof damage

- Hospital has water damage but no roof damage

- Sunny isle is okay, maybe a couple of stores blown in with roll down shutters

- GoodHope CountryDay School is intact

- Major grocery stores seem okay

- Airport capable of receiving relief flights ASAP if allowed

- Gallows Bay: multiple roofs missing on businesses

- East End roof damage on 1 out of every 20-30 homes. Some roads impassible due to power lines. Very limited cell / internet.

I apologize. Would appear the realtor didn't have all the proper info when posting as the Facebook post paints a more serious situation.

Any updates on when RCI cruise ships will be able to visit St. Maarten?

It won't be anytime soon. I have heard that many land vacations have been cancelled thru 2017 and I am pretty sure some cruise lines have cancelled thru November. My personal opinion is it will be at least one year if not longer.

Well' date=' I thought Maria's eye wall went right over St. Croix as a 4 or 5. Whoever said we are getting confused is correct in my case. I really like to read the breakdowns. One reason is that someone with access to information sorts it out. Another reason is that I can see that there ARE places still liveable. And that's really nice.

 

Renee[/quote']

Northern part of Maria eye skirted just off the island. The RFQ is typically the most brutal part of the storm and this is what St Croix took.

My son's friend returned home last week from a family vacation in St Martin. They were trapped there for 4 days and literally had to be rescued and airlifted out by the National Guard. They walked 15 miles thru devastation to the center of the French side just to get fresh water and to escape. The father is a no shrinking violet, was in the navy for years. He said it was "horrific" damage. But, if you want to believe it's just for the tv ratings, then ok.

Irritates me when I see people saying the recovery will be quick, they need tourism, they have been thru this before, etc....those people are living in our world, not the life of these people who live on islands. We have insurance, we having a savings account, we have a 401k to draw from if needed. People on these islands don't have that. Less than half the people in PR have insurance, even less have flood insurance. The same can be said for all these islands. People also don't realize when we have major outages there are thousands of people pulled in from multiple states to assist. That won't happen in the islands, they will be using the same man power as before and who knows what equipment and resources they have to use that were not damaged. On top of this people don't understand that there is little to no economy in St Maarten, Dominica as there are few places left to spend your money. It really is a dire situation on those two islands.

Where did you hear there was "horrid devastation" on St Croix? Just read a post where someone reposted a letter from realtors on St Croix saying they did not get as much damage as other islands. Also, the chan ge from St thomas to St Croix for Adventure was announced before maria

That was st Kitts with the realtor letter. Maria eye came close to st Croix and they received significant damage.

Impressions from the news media are not always correct. Look at Key West. Most of the US thought Key West was wiped out but that is not the case. Apparently some Keys closer to the mainland were hammered but Key West is up and running now. Probably begging for cruisers since many travelers are not making the Keys trip.

 

 

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Not so sure this was media.. I think it's people not understanding. Everything I heard from media stated big pine, marathon, etc. Many considered key west all of the keys or a much bigger portion. Key west was spared the brunt and that was evident from the day after. You still see people on this forum who don't understand key west is small and think it is in bad shape.

Do you know, I just re-read the memo from RCL and I think if I were on the next sailing, I'd cancel. It all hinges on the one word, "anticipate." in the following sentence. They are not promising they will be going (which they cannot do until the pier is checked out).

 

<<Due to the uncertainty of the timing of the port re-opening in San Juan, we anticipate our new departure date will be Wednesday, September 27, sailing a 3-night itinerary to Antigua and St. Kitts.>>

Bad word to use..to anticipate is to expect...

The Adventure of the Seas will not be returning to San Juan On Saturday. They will be going to Ft Lauderdale .Then return onMonday for San Juan with humanitarian aid and local Passengers.

 

 

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And there cruise that was to leave this weekend out of SJ has been delayed to the 27th as three night. They are allowing cancels for future credit but no refund.

https://es.flightaware.com/live/airport/TJSJ

 

 

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Says 5pm Sat or Sun, I am not fluid in there language though.

Yeah I know , but it doesn't take rocket science. Airport is supposed to open tomorrow at 8 pm. Fingers crossed. You would think they learned from HARVEY

 

 

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Link to airport being open tomorrow at 8pm? Thanks

Here is a link to hurricane history for St. Thomas and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 

http://www.hurricanecity.com/city/saintthomas.htm

 

You can look up the others just as easily as I can.

Thanks but it wasn't I who needed this info to support what I was saying. Thanks.

Months? Perhaps two or three, in some cases. Most though will have their cruise ports up and running before then. The islands may not be as attractive as before, but they depend on that money.. Years? No way. You can bet that the ports and cruise facilities will be a priority during clean up and repair. The interiors of these islands will take longer, but that will not stop them from receiving cruise ships, cruise passengers, and cruise money. And yes, these islands HAVE seen storms of the magnitude of Irma and Marie, just not in our lifetimes. In the case of Puerto Rico, It was hit with a storm of equal or greater strength in the 1920s. Monster hurricanes have been around since long before CNN, Fox News, and the Weather Channel, since the dawn of time in fact.

Please share the hurricane that was worse for St Thomas, St Maarten, Dominica? As far as PR it's still left to be seen which was worse, Maria or 1928. I can tell you that it really doesn't matter as they have to deal with the current storm of Maria.

If you think it will be months/years before cruise ports are open, it is YOU who is thinking unrealistically. Lets circle up in 60 days and compare notes. Weather you choose to visit these ports in the future based on safety concerns is up to you, but they will open back up much sooner than you think.

Yes let's compare in 60 days. No doubt that St Maarten and Dominica will still not be having cruise ships by then. St Thomas and St Croix possibly. San Juan most likely. Disagree with it's up to you on safety concerns. Ultimately it is up to the person, I agree. What you are missing is once the first bad act happens it will be a PR nightmare for Carnival as people will blame them. You also have to remember there are other ports to visit. Carnival is selling vacations. Very few will want to go to these ports until they are up and running to almost full capacity as far as excursions, places to visit, things to do. finally people need to stop comparing to previous hurricanes. These are circumstances that these countries have not experienced before. It's much different to recover from cat 1-3 storms vs 4-5 as the damage is much more significant. See u in 60.

While I can understand that it might be frustrating that you don't have answers if you're sailing this weekend, but quite honestly, it's a little unreasonable to expect that they're going to have answers yet. Heck, San Juan isn't even out of the heavy rain bands from Maria, there hasn't been enough time for them to assess what the situation really is there. Wishing otherwise can't really make it happen faster. Personally? I'd say the odds of them sailing from PR this weekend are probably somewhere between slim and none. Which means they need to figure out what they can make work as an alternative, but that's something that they have to figure out how they can get enough assets in place to make it work. I woudn't be real surprised if they bring the ship into another port to disembark the passengers that the next cruise simply will get cancelled. Expecting the next group of people to be able to make changes in that short of a period of time probably isn't realistic. Because it's likely going to be sometime tomorrow before they have anything figured out on what to do. Yeah, it sucks. Probably not as much as actually living on one of these islands sucks now.

100% guarantee they will not be sailing from San Juan this weekend. The ship may drop off supplies but if there are any cruisers on the ship they will not be getting off unless they are from PR.

ports will be up and running much quicker than people think in the moment of disaster

Pretty irresponsible to make comments like yours. St Maarten, Dominica, SAN Juan, St Thomas, St Croix have never been hit by hurricanes before like this. There countries and people are dealing with things they never imagined. It's much more than the port that is needed to cruise there. You must consider the safety of the passengers. There will be many that will want to go to places farther away from the port. At times like this it will not be safe as there will be people who try to take advantage of tourists as they have valuables. Please sit down and think this thru realistically as it may be months and years before cruise ships return to some of these ports. It sounds easy to say when the port opens we can cruise again but in reality is it isn't.

Very worrying & very sad.

Such a beautiful island and such lovely people when we visited.

It was my 13 year old daughter's favourite and where she claimed she wanted to live eventually.

8pm 175mph!

Thanks. Expecting landfall as a category 4 hurracaine tomorrow morning (around 8am)... This has been exhausting, back to back hurracaines... :loudcry::loudcry::loudcry:

We all wish you the best of luck. Not sure why you expect a cat 4? Currently 165 at cat 5 and showing signs of further intensification with no signs of deterioration unless a unexpected erc occurs.

It has now been a solid 15-16 hrs since the last communication from the island of Dominica. It would appear that the island is in dire situation.

I got the impression that Dominica has more people than Barbuda but very iffy construction. E.g. the report of the mayor's roof being blown off his house.

Barbuda pop 1600-1800 people (currently 0 as nobody has gone back since evacuating for Jose)

Dominica pop 72,000-74,000 people

What is the sense of people really watching this play out? Is Dominica like St. Thomas' date=' St. Maarten or Barbuda?

 

Renee[/quote']

I would say it's in the st Maarten and Barbuda range. People were still communicating as late as 2am via twitter and Facebook either from the island or via friends who were talking to them. Evidently Dominica has many underwater sea cables that allowed this to play out while in the eye of the hurricane. It appears around 2am that those communications were cut off. I was following about 5 people via twitter or Facebook and there has been no communication from them since around 2am. They were reporting heavy destruction up to that point in the areas they were located.

Search Roosevelt Skerrit on Facebook. He is the PM of Dominica. Very scary, reports galvanized steel flying all over the place.

Just horrible, absolutely horrible..

Roosevelt Skerrit "Tell the world that Dominica has been devastated...In the morning we will know how many dead there are..We were brutally hit."

From the guardian.