Wind destroys house trailer in Biscayne
By now all of us know that this week marks the beginning of the hurricane season. And while most of us at least gave some thought to making preparations, no one could blame one family in the village of Biscayne for being caught off guard yesterday in the face of a freak of meteorology. Selfred Flowers took News Five’s Karla Heusner to the site this morning for a survey of the damage and an interview with his son who watched his bedroom fly up into the air.
This tangled mass of metal, wood and glass is all that remains of the trailer Selfred Flowers has had on his property for the last 14 years. His family stayed in it during Mitch and until yesterday his four children had slept in it every night. He was stunned to return home and find it had been moved several yards and demolished. His 16 year old son Richard says he ran into the shed just three feet from the trailer when the wind and rain started. He looked out and to his amazement saw the trailer blown off its platform.
Q: “Tell me where you were around ten when this started to happen and what was the weather like at that point?”
Richard Flowers, Eyewitness
“I was over there in the bathroom; when it rains I usually go in the bathroom. I never expected anything to happen.”
Q: “What did you see?”
Richard Flowers
“I saw the drum blow down. I would have come outside to pick it up but at the same time the breeze came and the coconut tree just leaned. At the same time the house just lifted and dropped down and gone.”
Q: “So you saw it lift up in the air?”
Richard Flowers
“Yeah, I saw it.”
Q: “And then it kinda twisted before it fell or what did it do?”
Richard Flowers
“By the time it reached here I was already shocked and I wasn’t actually paying attention to it. I was only watching the house and said to myself, well it’s gone.”
Richard says the wind carried the family’s water containers and a piece of zinc several hundred yards across an open area, all the way to his uncle’s house. The zinc hit one of his relatives in the head, cutting her. The shed where he had been sheltering was untouched as was the Flowers’ main house. No one was seriously injured since the younger boys were at school. Little Tamara and her cat were in the main house and didn’t know what had happened until it was all over. Karla Heusner for News Five.
Acting Chief Meteorologist Justin Hulse says around the same time as the Flowers’ trailer was being blown away, the MET Office was measuring strong wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour. Although the family believes it was a small tornado or whirlwind, Hulse says Belize really does not have the proper conditions for tornadoes to form, but that strong gusts are capable of moving trailers especially if they are not firmly attached to their foundations. He says the winds and rain around Biscayne were part of the same series of thunderstorms which brought hail to parts of the Orange Walk District. He says this type of activity is normal for this time of the year.
