Wrecked Island Races to Evacuate Children Before Next Storm
- Helicopters, tour boats working to relocate 1,600 residents
- Irma wreaked ‘Armageddon,’ leaving few places to shelter
Irma Pounds Caribbean as She Races for Florida
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Neil Dickinson and his two helicopters are in a race against time, shuttling children, the elderly and the sick off Barbuda before it’s hit by a second major hurricane in three days.
His company, Caribbean Helicopters, is working to evacuate the small island of 1,600 people before Hurricane Jose arrives on Saturday. The island was already devastated by a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, which destroyed or damaged 95 percent of homes and killed one child. An unknown number of people remained on the island as of Friday afternoon -many fewer than 1,000, Dickinson estimates- with hardly any shelter to protect them from Jose’s 125-mile-per-hour winds.