Recalling the menace that was 'Maria'

Since graduating from Whitewater High School in 1970, Jeff Murdock has lived through military coups, has had malaria three times, was nearly shot after being accused of being a South African Military spy and was once thrown out of the country of Uzbekistan, but of all the tribulations he has faced in his lifetime, living through Hurricane Maria last September was perhaps the most harrowing.

Dominica — officially the Commonwealth of Dominica — is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea (southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique.) The island was devastated by Hurricane Maria on September 19 of this year, the most powerful storm to ever hit the island with a population of approximately 60,000.

Murdock is the son of Whitewater’s James and Patricia Murdock and after high school attended Montana State University and graduated with a degree in Ag Business, before volunteering to become a member of the Peace Corp in 1982 where he was first sent to southern Africa. He was sent to Dominica with the Peace Corps for three years until in 1990 he was sent to West Africa where there was a military coup in 1992. During his travels, Murdock met and then married his wife Athlene in 1988 in her home of Dominica. In 2007, the couple moved back to Whitewater with their three children for a brief time (Hector still lives in Phillips County) before Murdock was hired to work in Ethiopia. Murdock has lived across the globe — including Russia — and has worked overseas living and working in numerous third-world or ‘developing’ countries involved in human resource development work and other ambitions for the past 35 years.

“We go places with the Peace Corps and try to help people,” Murdock said.

In his younger days, Murdock said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his future and started asking people slightly older than he what they would do over in life if they had second chances as adults. The answers he got back included not getting married directly after college, not having children so soon after getting married, they wished they hadn’t gotten stuck in a local job too soon and finally they wished they had traveled more before settling down.

“Right there, I said I am out of here and I joined the Peace Corps,” Murdock said, heeding the advice he’d received. “Instead of saying ‘I’d wished I would have,’ I am going to go do it and I have definitely done it.”

Athlene has lived back in Dominica since 1992 (she was trapped there during a coup in 1992 while visiting the island while Jeff was still working and living in Sierra Leone, West Africa) and the couple has mostly called the island home for the last 25 years. The island of Dominica is roughly 300 square miles, 30 miles long, and 16 miles wide at its most wide point.

Murdock said that Hurricanes Irma and Jose had both missed Dominica and when Hurricane Maria came, the thought was that it would too likely miss the island.

“Instead of going north, it turned south and hit us directly, catastrophically, devastatingly,” Murdock said. “It changed from a Category 2, to Category 3, four, five and beyond extremely fast…it devastated us from toe to head and totally annihilated us.”

Murdock made the analogy of removing a fence post in which one moves the post one way and then another to get it lose.

“The wind came one way and then after the eye — about 45 minutes — it went the other way and knocked everything down,” Murdock said. “It was at night so you couldn’t see it, but you could feel it and everything was stripped.

The night of September 18, Murdock said he and Athlene were listening to the radio and the last thing they heard was Hurricane Maria had turned from a Category 4 to Category 5.

“It doesn’t go to Category 6,” he said. “Category 5 winds go up to about 165 miles per hour, but we have heard that winds here got up to 225 miles per hour. In living memory, people say this is 10 times worse than any hurricane to ever hit here. Every square inch of the island has been devastated.”

Prior to Maria hitting the island, Murdock said that he had prepared for the hurricane by putting electronics and clothes in plastic bags and when the first winds started touching the Murdock house, Jeff told Athlene “we need to get the hell out of here” because he had a sense of “impending disaster.”

He and Athlene headed to an old 8-foot by 10-foot, concrete storage bunker behind the home. Ahead of the hurricane, Murdock had cleared a 3x8 space in the bunker, placed two chairs back-to-back in the tiny space in case things got too dangerous.

“They got too dangerous,” Murdock said.

Once the heavy winds started, the Murdocks ran to the bunker and were soaked from head to toe. Armed with only a flashlight, the Murdocks sat back-to-back until the winds were so strong that it threatened to push the room’s door in.

The Murdocks stayed in the bunker for four hours, Jeff holding the door closed for the duration of Maria.

“One arm would get tired so I would switch to another,” he said. “There was nothing else we could do because if that door goes, something could fly through and kill you.”

During a small reprieve from the chaos in the eye of the storm, the Murdocks were able to change into dry clothes and for about 45 minutes were allowed to gather their bearings.

“It was absolutely calm,” Murdock said. “It was like time stopped.”

By 10:15 p.m., Maria was back and in full force.

“The second part of the storm really kicked the crap out of us,” Murdock said. “It just really beat us up.”

The sounds of the hurricane sounded to Murdock like jet engines or the turbines at work at Fort Peck Dam. He said the force of Maria felt like a boulder moving everything in its way and the Murdocks heard metal crashing and all they could do was pray.

It was a little after midnight that Murdock said he could feel that the storm had stopped. He shined a flashlight around and saw that high-tension wire pole was down in every direction and knew that once the sun rose that the devastation of the island would become apparent.

The couple walked from their bunker and back into their house and saw trees had crashed through walls and windows and they spent the next three hours scooping gallons of water out of the building. By 3:30 a.m., Murdock said he and Athlene tried to get some rest and at 5:20 a.m. went outside, dreading what he would see.

“All I could say is “oh my God’,” Murdock recalled. “I was really in shock. It was incredible. When I looked from our vantage point, roofs were gone and people were walking around like zombies, trying to see who’s trapped, who’s dead, who’s alive, who’s crushed, what happened to people’s homes. Power lines were downed, cars were damaged. It was just a disaster. It was like a war zone. It was like 10 atomic bombs had hit.”

All told, Murdock said that at least 50 people died and many more were and still are missing.

When Murdock talked with the PCN two weeks ago, he said things will never feel like normal, but the people of the island are starting to experience a new normal. Unfortunately, the ‘new normal’ included next to no supplies or running water for people and no electricity in most places.

“All the things I have gone through, all the life-threatening experiences around the world, I guess God figured I needed one more,” Murdock said. “It is nothing anybody can envision and it is just incredible. But, we are alive and we just have to start recovering. You just have to keep digging yourself out.”

There is currently a fund set up at First State Bank for anyone looking to donate to help the Murdock’s neighbors as they rebuild their lives on Dominica ( Box 730, Malta MT, 59538) and he said that he has already distributed about $8,000 to people on the island.

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart because that means a lot to the people here,” Murdock said. “We gave about $300 to a local man who lost the roof of his church and it might as well of been $3 million as far as he was concerned. It meant so much to him. I just want to say thank you to everyone.”