Area students tell of surviving Hurricane Ivan

First it was the howling. The howling escalated into a scream like a jet engine -- nonstop screaming.

That's how Jill Jackson of Hohenwald, Tenn., formerly of Marble Hill, Mo., described the sound of Hurricane Ivan when it hit the island of Grenada Sept. 7. She is a veterinary student at St. Georges University in Grenada.

Jackson said she was on campus when the howling winds first blew out all the windows on one side of the building she was in. She and some friends scrambled under a bed and stayed there for two and a half hours. Then came a calm, and she and others who had never been in a hurricane before thought the storm was over. Someone told them not to get up just yet.

"The windows on the side of the building we were on burst right after that," Jackson said. "The rest of the night we just heard screaming. We heard it all night long. It was not a person; it was the wind."

The next day when the students left the building, she said, they could see that the university was damaged but not nearly as badly as the rest of the island.

Dax Miller of Cape Girardeau, one of Jackson's classmates at St. Georges, said he and his golden retriever, Mac, lived in the Lanse Aux Epine area in a concrete house that was built into a hill.

About half of the island's homes were wooden shacks, Miller said, which did not survive the Category 5 hurricane.

Islanders who had not seen a hurricane since 1955 did not believe they were in any danger, Miller said. But he and some friends had been tracking it on a computer program, and when they realized it was going to hit with some force, they stocked up on food and water, bought some oil lamps and candles.

Getting students off the island proved to be a hit-and-miss effort. Flights kept getting canceled because of the weather both in Grenada and in the United States, where Ivan was heading. When Jackson finally did get a flight, she declined it because she learned that her father, David Jackson, was coming the next day with supplies and a missionary from the United Pentecostal Church. That they were bringing much-needed food and other items was the only reason they were allowed to come into Grenada, she said. Other non-nationals were being turned away.

Jackson said it became increasingly unsafe to stay in Grenada. Two days after Ivan hit, some of her friends told her that island residents were threatening foreigners with guns and knives.

"They were saying 'we're going to take everything because we don't have anything,' " Jackson said. "I started to get nervous after that. I was desperate to get off the island."

While she has come to love the island she has come to call home for the past three years and its people, Jackson said she knew she and the other Americans at the university had to leave.

"They totally lost everything," she said. "They needed our help getting resources they need, and they needed us to help them by getting out of the way."

Miller said he could see the university reopening by the January term because it wasn't quite so badly damaged, but the island is a "Catch-22" situation. With 3,000 students spending money on the island, the islanders could use the revenue. Tourism is basically wiped out, and their major crop, nutmeg, was destroyed.

"But they don't need another 3,000 people there," he said.

Jackson and her father got a flight out of Grenada to Puerto Rico, which was also reeling from another hurricane. They were able to find a place to spend the night before getting a flight into Atlanta and eventually made it to Tennessee Sept. 17.

Miller made it home about the same time, but under different circumstances. He was traveling with other students who were traveling with pets, a daunting task under good conditions. It took the effort of one of his professors who knows an American Airlines pilot to finagle airplanes that would accommodate 99 students and 140 animals first to Puerto Rico, then to the United States.

"Mac sat in my lap the whole time, even though he is an 80-pound retriever," Miller said.

St. Georges University's veterinary school has made arrangements for its students to continue their studies at Purdue University in Indiana.

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160