Vincentian cricketer still shaken after hurricane experience

Two weeks after experiencing Hurricane Maria in Dominica, Vincentian cricketer Ray Jordan says he is still shaken by the events of the night of September 18.

The 22-year-old Jordan, a right arm fast bowler, was part of the Windward Islands Volcanoes team that was preparing for the upcoming Cricket West Indies Professional Cricket League (PCL).

“It was terrifying… I have never experienced anything like that,” Jordan related.

Jordan recalled that on the night, he, along with St Lucian Audy Alexander and Grenadian Sherman Lewis, was in the bottom floor of their rented apartment in Point Michel.

“When it (the forces of the hurricane) started, the cell phone signal went down, so we could not get in contact with anyone; we were there, we were panicking…. We took our mattresses and went into one room, but the water began coming into the room, flooding my clothes, everything…. The windows got broken, bringing in more water,” Jordan stated.

He said that their predicament worsened as the roof of the building was blown off by the fierce winds, causing the proprietor, who occupied the top floor, to flee to a nearby house.

Jordan revealed that after the hurricane had passed, his first and foremost desire was to return to his homeland.

But this, he said, was another challenging proposition, because of lack of communication.

When that was resolved, Jordan said that fellow Volcanoes player Johnson Charles journeyed from his St Lucia home on his speedboat to get the players out of Dominica.

“When we left Dominica a few days after, the seas were still rough…. When we got to Martinique, the boat encountered some problems and we had to stay there overnight and had to take the ferry to St Lucia, where we got a flight on Liat back home here to St Vincent,” Jordan stated.

Apart from Jordan, Delorn Johnson and Obed Mc Coy, both left arm fast bowlers, were the two other Vincentian cricketers in the Volcanoes outfit who were in Dominica at the time of Hurricane Maria.

Noting that generally, Dominicans were unprepared for a category five hurricane, Jordan said that he is thankful to God to be alive.

Jordan is not new to such stressful situations, as he was part of the West Indies Under-19 team on a tour of Bangladesh in December 2013, when a bomb exploded in close proximity of their hotel in Chittagong.

This forced the West Indies Cricket Board to abort the tour, with the team returning to the Caribbean.

But Jordan said while the Bangladesh incident was one of concern, the Dominica experience is one he would never want to go through again.

He added that he is mentally conditioning himself to travel to Grenada this weekend, where the Volcanoes will resume their camp.

The Windward Islands Volcanoes play their first match of the 2017-2018 four-day regional PCL at the Grenada National Cricket Stadium, against the Leeward Hurricanes, October 26 to 29.(RT)