Crystal palace?

He posted this on StormCrib.
By Ronald Lockhart
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2017 07:43:42 -0400
I'm sorry I have not been giving updates about Hurricane Irma. This was the
worst hurricane I've been through in my life. I actually thought I was going to
lose The roof on the Crystal Palace. The winds were fierce and since they were
coming from the west, we have never really experienced that before. I'm happy
that my great grandfather in his wisdom chose to rebuild this house completely
with a steel frame and solid poured concrete. The corrugated galvanize roofing
is held down with nuts and bolts.

I'm sure many of you have seen the damages to St Thomas. What has ensued in the
past 10 days has been pure chaos. We weren't allowed out for 48 hours. A curfew
was imposed on us to only be out from noon to 6 PM. This is where the chaos
began. Running around to find supplies became a task where you had so many
people just driving around to look at what was going on. My purpose was for
supplies, just ice basically, as we had most everything else, there's was
seeing what's going on. It made for a mess with the traffic and apparently the
police did not feel it was necessary for them to direct traffic at major
intersections. What could've been done in an hour took three hours. As the days
passed, it's gotten better and we now have an extra two hours to be on the
street from 10 AM to 6 PM. Lines to the gas stations have gone from a three
hour wait to now less than five minutes. The supply ships are coming in with
food and grocery stores are open. Relief efforts on the way here as well and
being distributed daily. The one missing element that's dearly needed is tarps
to cover the rooves that have been blown away. At first they were only three
distribution centers, they have added a few more in the past two days. One
center was distributing tarps that were 8 x 10'. There are so many homes that
lost their entire roof that need at least 30 x 60'. We just have to wait and
see how it pans out.

There are many friends of the Islands all over that are putting together
packages and sending them. We are grateful for these friends. Tim Duncan raise
a whole bunch of money and shipped items in and actually came to help
distribute them. He is an angel in making.

Like I said I'm sorry I didn't keep in touch. We lost electricity and cell
phone service during the storm. AT&T came back online fortunately in the area
in which I am. There's an area to the east that I called 'the dead zone' as you
get there you have no service on the entire eastern end of the island as well
as St John who got battered more than St. Thomas. Sprint phones have not come
back up as yet and I hear that people are trying to switch to AT&T since it's
working. The third carrier VIYA I haven't checked for a signal as yet as they
have been down since the storm. I will plan a few more updates every evening.

Take care,

Ronnie

Many thanks