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Glen Carty and “Mr. Hurricane” Dennis Richardson. Photo Today / Hilbert Haar

St.  Maarten / By Hilbert Haar – “I did not know what a hurricane was. I was in the radio business and I thought, I am going to drive around. I was on Bush road when at 3 p.m. all hell broke loose. I saw one of those heavy freezers that stand in front of supermarkets twenty meters up in de air.  That’s when I got scared, I thought I was going to die.” It happened on Tuesday, September 5, 1995, tomorrow exactly twenty years ago. The radioman was Glen Carty, nowadays interim director at social insurance agency SZV and the manager of UTS Eastern Caribbean.

Today sat down with Carty and with Dennis Richardson, at the time the Lt. governor of the island territory, and currently our minister of justice, to mark the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Luis.

Shortly before he saw that freezer fly through the air on Bush Road, Carty heard the broadcast at Radio 101, housed in the building in Madame Estate where now Laser 101 is located. Behind the mike was a young man with one of the finest broadcasting voices on the island – Cedric Peterson, currently employed at the government department of communication DCOMM. “I heard a lot of noise in the mike and I asked Cedric what was going on,” Carty remembers. “The roof is coming off, Cedric said. Not in pieces, but in one go.”

To read the full 1200 words story, buy a copy of Today’s edition Friday, September 4, 2015