WRATH OF A CATEGORY 5
Laurie McCoy couldn’t make the sounds stop in her mind: the deafening wind, the smashing of trees and debris, the air screeching like a train whistle through the cracks, the water sloshing into places it shouldn’t be. Simply seeing the news coverage of Category 5 Hurricane Dorian relentlessly lashing the Bahamas in September brought those sounds, and more, back for McCoy in a way that made her feel like Hurricane Irma had returned to haunt her all over again.
“Laurie feels that she has PTSD,” says her husband, Ken Reynolds, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. “She’s been crying all week.”
The couple, from Canada, experienced the shock of Dorian’s at a marina and head for a cement house on Sint Maarten when Irma barreled into that island as a Category 5. A flying boat smashed into theirs, and then hit the next boat over, which took out a dock pylon and sent all the boats loose in the storm. Even still, the couple felt lucky: A family they knew had stayed aboard with three kids, and all but one child died.
