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Ivan survivor: 'It got horrible'

A St. Petersburg High graduate studying in Grenada found herself in the middle of the powerful hurricane.

ST. PETERSBURG - Candace Hinote and her medical school classmates hunkered down in a lecture hall in Grenada as Hurricane Ivan blew in the wooden doors and shattered the windows.

"Tiles fell off the roof and broke the windows," she said. "We all ducked down between the seats, and some of the students took the dry erase boards to protect themselves."

Hinote and her roommate at St. George's University sheltered beneath a thick blanket.

"I didn't look out. I was eating Wheatables and tried to be relaxed," said Hinote, a 1997 graduate of St. Petersburg High School's International Baccalaureate program.

Now the 25-year-old first-year medical student is back home, safe from the powerful hurricane that devastated Grenada, the former British colony where she is studying.

As the hurricane threatened, no one seemed worried at first. Before evacuating her dorm for the higher ground of the lecture hall, she collected a few necessities including her laptop computer, some books and clothing, snacks and water. She intended to study during the storm, but those plans changed quickly.

On a patio with other students last Tuesday afternoon, "all of a sudden, a gust of wind and rain blew in from nowhere," she said.

"It was very gray outside. There was like a haze where the sky should be, where the water stopped and the sky began. Some big waves started coming up," said Hinote, who ran inside with the others.

"We could hear things breaking outside. And we saw this car rolling down the street."

The fierce winds continued for about an hour and a half. Then came the calm of the eye.

"We all went outside to use the bathroom," said Hinote. The restrooms were in a building outside the lecture hall.

"It got horrible pretty much right away" after the eye passed, she said.

As the ceiling panels began to fall in, she and other students sought refuge in a nearby classroom without windows. That's where they spent Tuesday night.

When they ventured out the next morning, they discovered the door to the financial aid office had blown in. Inside was a working telephone. Students lined up to call home.

Hinote, who has been married for only six weeks, was able to make a brief call to her husband, Drew, back in Florida.

"I said, "I'm okay. I love you,' " she said. Later, that phone line went down. That day, the students still didn't realize the extent of the storm's fury.

"It was weird, once we got around and looked around, I don't know what got over us. We started cleaning up the campus," she said.

"It's not occurring to me what am I going to eat next. As I was starting to clean up, I was starting to get dehydrated."

With four other students, she set off on a 3-mile walk to their dorm. They were careful to avoid fallen power lines. They also waded through knee-high water. On the main road, the location of warehouses and factories, they saw looters.

"A lot of people were taking food and drinks, including beer. Tons of people were taking mattresses. I don't know how they were carrying them. I actually saw a couple of people with entertainment systems. They didn't do anything to us," she said. "They didn't harass us."

Her second-floor dorm survived, but those on other floors did not.

Hinote and her roommate, Uyen Nguyen, who is from Louisiana, decided to cook a meal in the dorm's outdoor kitchen, which was undamaged. They fixed spaghetti with canned tomato paste found in the debris. They added chicken from their rapidly warming refrigerator. Another student contributed mangoes.

"It was a really weird meal," Hinote said, remembering the grit of sand as she chewed.

To quench their thirst, they drank water from a bathtub. The water was purified with a filter.

Thursday, students started receiving one rationed meal a day.

"Usually we ate around 3. They'd mark your hands, so you didn't go through the line twice," Hinote said. "All the cooking and rationing and organizing and serving was all done by students."

Thursday also was the first day students started trying to leave the island. Hinote departed on Saturday with other American students and flew into Tampa on Sunday night.

She said she hopes to continue her studies when classes resume Sept. 28. She said she wants to graduate with the students with whom she bonded during the frightening hurricane and its aftermath.

"There were about five of us and we pretty much had each other's backs the whole week," she said.

"We kept each other calm."

Pillow

Sheet

Laptop

Two changes of clothing

Books for studying

Water

A package of Pop-Tarts

2 chocolate fudge puddings

Box of Wheatables

Monday

6 p.m. Packs and heads to evacuation shelter.

Tuesday

1 p.m. First effects of Hurricane Ivan.

5 to 6 p.m. Calm as the eye passes over, an opportunity to go to the bathroom.

About 6 p.m. Storm becomes fierce. Windows break, doors crash open.

8 p.m. Ceiling tiles fall in.

10 p.m. Seeks refuge in safer room.

Wednesday

7:30 a.m. Rains stop. Makes brief call to husband.

Helps to clean up campus and walks 3 miles to dorm. Sees looting.

3 p.m. returns to campus.

Thursday

Retrieves belongings from dorm with university truck.

Rationed meals begin.

Friday

Makes first of two trips to the airport in an attempt to get off the island.

Saturday

Evacuated by the U.S. State Department. Spends night in Trinidad.

Sunday

Flies to Miami and makes connection to Tampa.