On the move

Just wanted to wish you luck. I can not imagine losing almost everything. The people here on the island are truly understand how you feel. My husband and I just moved here (military) and some of his co workers have been deployed to go assist. Good luck and please let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

God Bless,
Stacy

Dear KatrinaEvac:

Some people from Atlanta, GA were in my place tonight and told us that a couple staying at the resort where they're enjoying a vacation were from New Orleans and were headed back today not knowing what they would find upon their return.

You say that you begin your island life on St. Croix on September 24th and are planning now to turn what was supposed to be a vacation into a living situation because of the devastation of New Orleans.

There may be people who can assist you in finding a reasonably-priced rental and maybe even some who can help you with a job. BUT, one thing you have to understand is that the Virgin Islands is slap-bang in the middle of hurricane season, a whole bunch of restaurants have either closed or are in the process of closing down for several weeks, so the basic job market for bartenders and servers is pretty much non-existent.

Oh, by the way, I lost pretty much everything I had during Hurricane Marilyn's devastating swath over St. Thomas on September 15, 1995. St. Croix suffered the same devastation from Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

I know what you're talking about insofar as just a few things left behind unscathed but be very careful about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Take a deep breath, enjoy your STX vacation!

Hello and welcome to the board.

You both should be able to find work in the service industry. As suggested to all others that move here, you should have at least a couple months of $$ to keep you a float (for rent, transportation, etc.) & just in case you don't find work right off the bat. We have several banks here, but none that are tied to stateside banks. They do all have ATM machines so you can use those. Once on island you can set up a bank account, post office box etc. If you lost your social security cards, start working on getting replacements. There is some information on their website at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/emergency/ about the hurricane/effects, not directly about getting a replacement card but you might contact them and ask about that. A social security card is asked for often when getting various things done here in the islands; including getting a health card - which you will need to work in restaurants. You also need a photo id to get many things done.

Scroll to the top of this page and click on home and then from there click on housing, employment, transportation - so you can familiarize yourself with these aspects of island living. The information there should help you out some.

All the best with the putting things back together again and with your vacation/move. If you come up with other questions, feel free to ask. 🙂

--Islander