At least four South Hams families nervously waited for news of loved ones in the Caribbean as Hurricane Irma struck the region last week.

Among those caught up in the disaster was Claire Massingham and her family. Her mother, Sue, who lives in Kingsbridge, was relieved to hear her daughter, partner and children were safe, despite losing

“everything they have” as the British Virgin Islands were hit with the full force of the storm.

Claire Massingham, her husband Royden Fraser and their two children Tyler and Rosie arrived back in the UK on Monday, having seeing damage that they “couldn’t comprehend”.

“We were expecting to ride it out”, Claire explained, “its the hurricane season so we knew far in advance and everyone is always watching the weather, but even though we knew it was going to be a category five, we couldn’t comprehend the damage that occurred.

Claire and Royden, with their two children, had spent the lead up to the hurricane prepping their apartment, closing storm shutters and using plywood on the windows and doors without shutters. They were worried about the front door, so they put provisions, food, flashlights etc in the children’s back bedroom and prepared to ride out the weather.

Sitting on the bed as the wind picked up, Claire said they still had internet signal and heard that St Martin, the island further down had been “decimated”. “Then it got scary”, Claire said, the winds were getting stronger and I said we should all get in the cupboard”.

Claire and Royden moved a chest of drawers out of the cupboard and they huddled together in there with pillows when they heard glass shattering. That was the front door being blown in.

The wind, looking for a way out of the house, found the weakest point, which happened to be the back windows of the bedroom they were in.

“I heard glass shattering like I had never heard before, the windows were gone and glass was everywhere, all over where we had been sitting on the bed, the door, frame and all, was ripped off like paper, the chest of drawers was on the ceiling.

“I thought that was it.”

Royden then left the cupboard, leaving Claire to hold the door closed with the kids inside, and saw that the other bedroom was in a better state, so they moved to the next room. ?“We were carrying the kids from one room to the next with 200mph winds coming through the hallway. We got into the cupboard in that room and the neighbours and their one-year-old came down because they were worried about the roof.”

So the seven of them were in the cupboard, waiting for it to pass.

“Then it stopped” Claire said. The eye of the storm was passing over them and there was a “silence”. They made the decision to move to their neighbour’s house across the road. Located on the other side of the hill, it had come off better than their apartment building.

As the wind started picking up again, Claire moved everyone to the back of the house. Then the “roof and front windows blew out”, in what Claire described as “the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced”.

Royden said that the neighbour’s house had shutters screwed into the building, but one screw gave way and metal shutter started flapping. They used a coat hanger to pull the shutter back on, and used rope to tie it around their settee. It didn’t help and all the windows blew out.

He said: “There was a hole in the roof and we tried to use an ironing board to plug the hole, but that went and nearly took my neighbour with it, we were hanging on to him.

“We had to nail the door closed, if that last door had gone, that would have been it.”

“We were just holding each other, Rosie knew something was wrong, but Tyler, the look of terror in his eyes...” said Claire.

Then the house started flooding through the hole in the roof and they used dustpans and buckets to get the water out and down the sink. All the toilets blew back with the pressure and sent fountains and sewage into bathrooms.

By the time it had passed, and neither Claire or Royden knew how long it had taken, but it was nighttime when they went back outside, all the houses around them had been destroyed.

“The trees were just sticks, with no leaves on them, roofs were off, there was flooding everywhere”, Claire explained.

The roof of the family’s apartment was still attached to the building, so they stayed there overnight, but when they woke up the morning, Claire said that “I have never seen such devastation. It was like a bomb had gone off. People have lost everything.”

Their apartment was severely flooded and they had lost a lot of stuff. “There was no power, no water, no communication. We were trying to clean up but with no water, we couldn’t.” Royden and others set about with saws and machetes trying to clear paths for vehicles to come and go.

The main economy on the BVIs is tourism and when a storm or hurricane is due, the companies tie all their boats together in a sheltered area of the island. Not even that was safe with boats piled two or three on top of each other when they were checked the next day.

The company that Royden worked for had 15 boats, only three were salvageable. Damaged, but still floating. Another company salvaged one boat our of a fleet of 60.

“For the next couple of days the whole island was in shock,” Claire said, “the buildings were just ripped to pieces. No one knew what was going on.”

The managed to make it to Royden’s sister’s house, which had a generator she was allowed to put on for a few hours in the evening, and that is when they started to get internet access and could contact family and friends who had been unable to get hold of them for more than 24 hours.

“Our family back here knew that St Martin had been flattened and that St Thomas had been hit badly, but they had no news of the British Virgin Islands at all. They didn’t have any updates or anything.

“It was Facebook that got us out. There is no evacuation from the island, its the people off-island, either who were on holiday or who chose to leave, those are the people coordinating evacuations from the BVI.

“We were told there was a Department of Disaster Management at the hospital but when we got there, there was nothing, no desk, no list of numbers, nothing.

“We heard through Facebook that there were no flights leaving the island until Tuesday, so we went back to salvage what we could, and heard our family had booked a flight for us so we grabbed our passports and left.

“By the time we got to the airport, the flight had left without us, but the private charter company managed to get us on a flight so we left with a bag of useless things from our apartments, our passports and the clothes on our backs.”?Claire said that it was the health of the children that forced them to leave, and that the stench on the island was horrible. Royden said: “The stench, you don’t know if its animals, people, garbage or sewage.”

Medical supplies have been desimated, and while the family wanted to stay to help, Claire recognised that there is no power, no water, no medicine and the fewer people on the islands means more to go around for those who are there.

“We have family and friends still there, and nothing is organised. They have no way of finding out what happened and are relying on people who have left to give information and aid back in again.”

Claire and her family are not the only people from the South Hams caught up in Hurricane Irma. Abi Whitting had to report her brother Leo missing as they were unable to contact him in the BVI after the hurricane struck.

“We were mentally worrying, out of our minds”, Abi explained, “Leo managed to call us for a few seconds from someone else’s phone so we knew he was alive, but we knew nothing more. All he could say to us was ‘I’m alive but Tortola has gone’.

“They have no infrastructure left, no water, no food, aid took five days to get ashore. The aid is coming into Road Town, the main town, but there are people stuck out in the sticks with roads that are either gone or blocked by debris. They need helicopters or boats to be able to get to these little places.

She said the Government “weren’t being particularly helpful”. “The British Consulate have no plans, no evacuation plans, one woman gave me completely the wrong number, it was supposed to be the BVI authorities, it was actually a number in New Zealand, its a farce.”?Leo is with another Salcombe man, Simon Roberts, now on Antigua, trying to get on a flight back to the UK where his girlfriend and two-year-old daughter are. They came over two weeks ago, on holiday, and are safe.

Another Salcombe man, Oliver Alsop, runs a business out there, but that has been “destroyed”, along with their house.

The hurricane season in BVI ends in November, meaning there is another month and a half where the BVIs could be hit again. In fact they were expecting to be hit again on Saturday, three days after the direct hit from Hurricane Irma.

“Fire engines were driving around warning people to secure themselves and get somewhere safe, but everything had been destroyed, where could they go?” Claire said. “There was no way to secure the debris that was already littering the island, the hurricane shelters were damaged, houses were gone, there are no safe places left.

“Expecting that second storm was my lowest point. Thank god it didn’t come. People need to get out. Some can afford to get off the island, but most live paycheque to paycheque and they’ve lost their homes and their possessions.”

Luckily that storm changed direction and moved north, avoiding the area, but there is still a risk of further storms and hurricanes.

Right now, Claire and her family have been “overwhelmed” by gifts of clothes for themselves and the children, but they need to start from scratch, find a place to live as they are currently staying with Claire’s mum Sue in a one-bedroom flat, Claire needs to find a job.

“We have no money, no car, we need everything to survive, pampers, toothbrushes, everything you take for granted. I’m not entitled to any help or benefits from the Government because I’ve been out of the country for so long, despite the fact we were in a British Overseas Territory.”

If you can help, contact Claire through her Facebook page.

Local events have been organised to help support Claire and her family, with a ‘Hurricane Irma Coffee Morning being held at the Congressional Hall in Loddiswell on Friday, September 15, between 10am and 12.30pm.

Abi Whitting has also set up a JustGiving page to help the Leo and his family, the Massinghams, Simon Roberts, his wife and children and Oliver Alsop to either “either evacuate, receive medical supplies, food, water and survival aid in Tortola” aiming to raise £15,000. You can find the page by visiting: www.justgiving.com and searching for ‘Abi Whitting’.