Hurricane Maria, a category 3 storm, is expected to pass near the Turks and Caicos later today.

That’s where North Bay’s Monika Ladouceur and her husband were when Hurricane Irma stormed through earlier this month.

She says they were moved to a room on a higher floor ahead of the storm and knew it was a serious situation when the plywood started going up.

“Blocking off all the rooms, all the sliding doors, everything on the beachfront, the lounge chairs were being stacked and tied together to make them heavy,” she says. “There was a lot of preparation going on and it just started to get scary at that point.”

Ladouceur says the winds picked up in the evening and overnight.

“There were things hitting the building, there were things flying off the building, things banging around. It sounded like people were bowling or moving furniture upstairs,” she says.

During the night she says they worked to keep their room from flooding with water and rain seeping through the doorway.

The morning after debris was scattered everywhere and the airport was flooded too.

Ladouceur says there were many staff that were going home to nothing.

She says they know there’s a danger with taking a trip during hurricane season, but already have another trip booked for next year.

“That’s the chance you take, we were in the Bahamas two years ago when there was a threat, I think from Matthew, and it was just a big storm, it kind of passed us by, broke up in the mountains they said. So we were hoping that this would happen again,” she says.

Once back in North Bay, their daughter threw them a surprise welcome home party.

 

 

(PHOTO: In this Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017, photo, damage is left after Hurricane Irma hit Barbuda. Hurricane Irma battered the Turks and Caicos Islands early Friday as the fearsome Category 5 storm continued a rampage through the Caribbean. (AP Photo/Anika E. Kentish)