#1485 Postby JaxGator » Fri Aug 05, 2016 10:51 am
BZSTORM wrote:Ok checking back in we finally got elec power back on and seems sable at least in my area. I have lived here since 1998 just in time for my first Hurricane experience Hurricane Mitch and never had a North landfall Hurricane or TS that punched us so bad in the South. barely got any sleep last night what with branches flying into roof and at 2am - 4am gust so strong they shook my house which is wood on stilts. Have since found out just down the road less than mile a sail boat harbored in lagoonside marina say they registered gusts at 85kts SW in the early hours of the morning. I had wrongly figured we would get the usual max gusts of 40kts that we have had in the past, lesson learned, at 5.30am we were already taking stock of what damage had occurred on the property I live on, not too bad a few trees down, loads of leaves on ground and branches. tree debris and large benches in road which were cleared pretty easily. At the point of Placencia the damage was more dramatic one of the oldest dive stops on end of pier with mangroves beside it is not a piles of planks washed on shore. The new multi million dollar pier which was supposed to be storm proof lost one whole side deck and another has bunch of boards loose, another resort had their newly refurbished piers deck torn off so just posts left. Have no idea how much rain came down, Bz Mets climate change dept has weather station at the airstrip but as far as I know they still haven't got remote data collection on it. What I can say is that even skiffs with additional bilge pumps on them were overwhelmed and this morning additional pumps were needed to bail out allot of boats that were on verge of sinking.
Elsewhere in the country San Pedro is in pretty bad shape with a large number of businesses washed away or severely damaged mostly in the southern half of the caye, the winds I am told were all from the sea front side and they have reef which helped allot in reducing the size surge they got. Caye Caulker which is smaller caye sustained same kind of damage as did San Pedro. Belize city has some serious flooding issues in various areas of the city, houses lost roofs, some collapsed entirely a number of emergency evacuations were required, a call recently went out for general public to turn out to help start do clean up there is allot of debris trees, zinc roofing etc lying around, allot of power cables are down as well. Belmopan had no flooding but allot more roof damages than they had anticipated. Spanish Lookout the Mennonite community reported to have 5 chicken barns have been severely damaged. One or two houses have some sustained some minor structure or roof damage. Lots of broken trees and brush on the roads. Iguana Creek Bridge is flooded and river is quickly rising. San Ignacio started experiencing rivers rising fast early this morning which are now in full flood. Crops have been damaged but NEMO is still accessing damage while conducting search and rescue. So far NO LOSE OF LIFE REPORTED. Belizean's are already bouncing back - property can always be replaced lives cannot, the forecast tracks shift to the South no doubt saved lives because people were prepared for landfall near Dangriga, so both North and South were better prepared, NEMO had issued warning to prepare days in advance as well. The wind field was so big trees were knocked down all the way to Punta Gorda. I guess we also got complacent before with last few years of TS storms and hurricane having smaller eye walls.
Thank you for the updates BZSTORM and it's good there wasn't any deaths or injuries. Those winds, rain and surge packed a punch.
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