Jolene and Kevin McHugh who were celebrating their second wedding anniversary at Disneyland, Florida, when they had to evacuate to avoid Hurricane Matthew
AS THE CARIBBEAN counts the cost of the destruction of a hurricane which claimed hundreds of lives, one Lisnaskea couple had a lucky escape from the worst of the disaster.
The most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 has been rampaging through the Caribbean, killing over 1000 people in Haiti and at least 18 in the US.
Local artist Kevin McHugh and his wife Jolene, were on holiday in Florida when the evacuation notices were issued for Thursday evening. After a mammoth nine hour drive to Atlanta airport and sleeping in a rental car, they eventually made it home safely at the weekend.
The couple had decided to return to Florida two years after spending their honeymoon there but ended up in a race against time.
Kevin told the Herald: “When we were booking the holiday we were told that it was the tail end of hurricane season but we thought we would take our chances. We were totally unaware that the storm was coming because we hadn’t been listening to the news.
It wasn’t until my sister texted us to say that a hurricane was coming and once the thunder and lightening started that reality started to sink in.”
Kevin and Jolene only lost a day of their holiday after a state of emergency was declared. They had been due to fly from Orlando to Atlanta and then on to Dublin.
“We were warned in our hotel about the curfew and once we knew that our flights from Orlando were cancelled, we decided to go on to Atlanta,” Kevin said.
The couple ended up in a taxi driving towards the storm as they tried to rent a car with the curfew approaching and no guarantee of getting one. Despite all of this, Kevin said his biggest worry was the thought of driving an automatic car for the first time on the right-hand side of the road.
“I kept thinking is this really the time I’m going to learn how to do this but I felt it was better to be doing something rather than just waiting around.
“We set off at 4pm, just one hour before the curfew, so it was a close call but thank God for sat nav. It was meant to be a six hour drive but turned into nine because everyone was evacuating and there was hoards of traffic around us.”
Jolene kept in touch with worried family and friends back in Fermanagh who stayed up all night via text. Kevin says they met many other people less fortune than themselves en route to the airport.
“We met one family in a fuel station and they had a 16 hour drive ahead of them to get to their relatives with no guarantee that they would have a home to go back to.”
Kevin says he and Jolene feel very lucky.
“It was a life lesson and at the end of the day we had nothing to lose with a home to come back to which unfortunately others have not.”
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