Tag Archives: Cabarete

A quick post storm update before I leave my beach home in Sosua today. I’m going to see if I can get a quick recreational free-dive in today, check on neighbors and look toward settling in to my work before the week starts.

The last few days have been filled with “getting back to normal” activities – cleaning up the area and getting my office reinstated for work.

The Hurricane

Hurricane Irma hit the north shore Dominican Republic on Thursday, causing damage to north coast homes and flooding in some areas.

Reuter’s images below shows how some local area fared (credit to UK Express). There is also a link to an Express article below and also a tweet of satellite imagery that shows how close the eye came to our beach community (our location was just south of the eye of the storm in that image on the shore of the Dominican).

Images of our area.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/851444/Hurricane-Irma-damage-pictures-Dominican-Republic-Haiti-storm-path-track-model

UK Express Article about the storm:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/851444/Hurricane-Irma-damage-pictures-Dominican-Republic-Haiti-storm-path-track-model

Satellite image of just how lucky we were that they eye of the storm stayed just north of us off the coast.

Among towns hit by Irma were Sosua (where my beach residence / home office is) and neighboring communities Cabaret and Puerto Plata.

“More than 5,500 people in the country were evacuated in the run-up to the storm”, officials said.

Prior to the eye of the storm approaching (Wed evening) I had hunkered down in my beach residence with Monkey (the bulldog) thinking that if it got “too bad” we would retreat to higher ground. Well, I accidentally fell asleep and Monkey woke me up around 4 am and it was serious.

So I contacted local friends (we still had internet) and off we went (a few miles inland). Cathy and Richard (local friends and owners of Wildefire Properties) once again were the angels that saved my butt (there have been previous near death experiences I won’t go in to hahaha).

At 11:47 AM I posted this video from their home thinking that the eye of the storm was as close to us as it would get… I thought that’s not so bad. I even got my temporary office set up and started to broadcast in to our main trading room. But then communications went down and the storm got more serious.

So yes, my communications went down (trading room broadcast ended) and we sat and waited out the storm – fortunate to be inland, up high, in a modern home. The trees breaking around us like twigs was intimidating but all in all we fared well considering.

Later that afternoon Rich delivered Monkey and I back to the beach house and our beach wasn’t calm anymore and much of Playa Alicia beach had changed. Other locals on the beach fared well but it was obvious (with the downed trees everywhere and local building damage) that it was better to be away from the shoreline.

Interestingly enough, I was one of the only folks in the Sosua beach area with internet because the primary source locals use was down, cell networks were down etc so locals asked if they could use my internet to communicate with family etc. So I had a number of visitors in among the damage strewn in my yard.

Note: when I first got to Sosua about 3 months ago, because local internet was not stable enough for our trading room broadcasting and uploading requirements, I had arranged for fiber internet be brought in from near 2 miles away on a small cable line that literally runs from downtown over and with power lines through trees down the beach edge through the restaurant property behind all my neighbors homes (in their yards) and in to my home (i have actually walked the line in amazement).

I cleaned up my yard Thursday evening and helped neighbors get cleaned up, unpacked my office, mopped the floors, took all the tape off the windows and started broadcasting in to oil trading room by midnight Thursday night. Friday was a normal day in the trading rooms – broadcasting was only interrupted once in premarket with a quick power outage.

Post Storm – a plea for aid and thank-you!

Today I am going to try and get a quick swim (rec dive) and see if any neighbors need any final clean up help and post this personal update and plea for aid.

There are many ways folks that can help those less fortunate than my story. In my most humble opinion, with storms like Irma, Harvey, Jose, the earthquake in Mexico and others raging it seems… please reach out as you are able. On a personal level I am doing my best as time allows to help folks in my community, but I intend to take that a step further and formalize our contribution (corporately) – I encourage anyone that can please do so.

I now will go and do that dive, dig in with the community and then turn my focus on getting our reporting and systems ready for futures market open Sunday evening.

My best and peace (and from everyone here) to all those supporting from out there in the world. Prayers for Florida, Cuba in the path of Irma, those now in the path of Jose and all affected:) And remember to take your pet!

Curt