Hurricane damage

"Tim" is Maho blog follower, a previous volunteer worker, and a returning volunteer this fall and had posted the following comment yesterday: "Good to hear that Maho survived another bout with nature, but that's the "nature" of eco-resorts, they are able to bend and roll with the punches! Looks like I'll have some cabins to repair come October."

He couldn't be more right! The tents here at Maho seem to work with nature in more ways than not, one being in the face of an angry Irene. While most tents had little or no damage, there were a few that will take us some time to repair. We'll most likely not start working on the bigger repairs until sometime in October, in case another storm passes through just after the repair is made.

Highlighted below is an example of a tent and the damage caused to it. This tent was damaged in part because those familiar "roll downs" were left down during the storm. You would think putting down the barrier would help protect the tent from rains and winds, not quite: Having the roll down "down" actually causes more damage to the tent and allows more water and debris to enter, not to mention the time and expense of repair. During a storm like this we have very high winds that cause the roll down to act as a sail, banging against the screen until it breaks, eventually opening up the entire window. Unfortunately we had a few tents where the roll downs were left down or fell down during the storm, pictured below is an example.

Here we have the picture of a roll down, properly attached to the top of the screen with rope. During really big storms we would hope to have all tent roll downs look this way.

Pictured below we have a roll down left down during the storm, and the damage it has done to the bottom of the screen.

Worst case scenario is when the roll down has been blown off, also damaging the screen.....allowing the maximum possible wind, rain and debris into the tent during the storm: