Dean “The Sportsman” Greenaway survived Hurricane Irma unscathed in his East End home, which mostly stood up to the elements. But in the hours after the storm passed, a rumour spread throughout Tortola that the journalist and coach had died. Below are Mr. Greenaway’s words describing the experience.
‘My second Category 5’
Hurricane Irma was actually my second Category Five, because I’d experienced Hurricane Gilbert in Jamaica. So I had an idea of what could happen and what to expect.
During Irma, like everybody else I was hunkered down. I looked out my window, and you see trees falling; you hear different things. Then I heard my neighbours’ roof was gone. We ended up rescuing my neighbours — six of them — and during the eye a couple came across, so I had eight people in my house, including a young child. After that the tail came in, so I lost a sliding door, some windows. Water was coming in some areas where I never thought it would have come in, but it came.
After the storm I came out and I started seeing the damage. I couldn’t get out of the driveway because a container had blown and blocked the entrance, so the only way I could get out was to walk around — walking and seeing all of these people through East End the morning after in a daze.
Condolences
When I was walking in Long Look, somebody expressed condolences to me.
I was like, “Well, who died?” I had no [internet] connection, so I didn’t know what was going on. They told me Dag Samuels. I said, “Dag Samuels? Coach?” They said, “Yeah: You don’t know?” It was a shock to me.
Then I start hearing: “But I hear you were missing!” And I go, “Missing? Missing from where? I was home! I had eight people in my house. I don’t know how I could be missing.”
I’m walking through Long Look, and by the time I got to the community centre, there must have been at least 15 people saying Dag had died, and I think that’s when the hurricane really hit me. Because Dag and I had been together a lot, and we had spent between 2002 and 2015 on a number of missions representing the BVI [at sporting events abroad].
So I went home, and I think maybe about six people had told me I was missing. I’m like, “What this story is coming from?” I figured that they mixed up something with me and Dag, because we have similarities. So whatever might have happened to Dag, I started hearing it happened to me.
85 Facebook shares
I finally was able to get my car out. When I reached at Water and Sewerage Department, I realised I could get signal, so I pulled on the side and I just put on Facebook, “I’m alive and well.” Between Water and Sewerage and when I got to the [Central Administration Building], that was shared 85 times.
My daughter in Atlanta heard that the house had collapsed on me. So when I got to send out messages and put things on Facebook, it was a big relief to a lot of people.
Hugs from strangers
From then, every day following the storm I have been hearing that I’ve been dead. I have never been hugged so much in my life. I’d go to funerals and always wonder: You hear these things about what people really think. This is the first time I got an idea.
People I have no idea who they are — I guess they heard me on the radio — came and hugged me. I have had so much expression of people genuinely happy to see me. It was very humbling. I must thank all the people who have expressed that type of sentiment to me.
I’d be walking and you’d see people looking at me like they’d seen a ghost. It came a point where I was coming to town writing something for the Daily News and I was taking a picture of Little Denmark and trying to explain to my brother [on the phone] that people thought I was dead. I couldn’t get to explain to him because people are stopping me. So I had to decide which photos I’m going to take, take them, and then go hide behind the Tourist Board in my jeep and do my story so people don’t see me.
It’s only recently that I get to walk on Main Street. So that I can meet a deadline, I had to literally limit what I do. Even in traffic people seeing me. I have to stop and I have to oblige.
Death story won’t die
As the days go by, you’d have thought this stuff would die. Today I was upstairs in [the Human Resources Department office in the CAB] moving some printers, and this guy looks at me and goes, “What’s your name?” I said, “Dean ‘The Sportsman’ Greenaway.” He goes, “But I thought you were dead!”
Some people said they thought I was foolish because I went outside of my house to take pictures during the storm. I said, “Why would I go out to take a picture in the storm?” My equipment would be damaged, one. Secondly, from my porch I can look out and see what was happening in East End. So I would actually show them pictures: what I was seeing when I look out. There’s a picture I took during the storm from my porch. I showed them what I was seeing so that they could see that, hey, I didn’t have to go on my roof.
‘Dead man jokes’
I think on average between four to five times a day, every day, I’ve had to talk about this story about me being dead. One person even told me, “You know, Dean, now is a really good time for you to disappear: get a face lift, change your identity and come back as someone else and you have no bills!”
It has been a lot of light-hearted humour. Someone in the complex — whenever she meets me, she goes, “The Resurrected!” I remember passing the cops one time: They say, “Oh, you’d better let the dead man pass.”
The minister of sports saw me and he goes, “I don’t know dead man take photos.” Quite a number of dead-man jokes have emerged.
Sometimes people would see me and I would see them and I would just say, “Yes, I heard I was dead.” You could see they wanted to tell me something. I think they didn’t know how I would approach the subject, but I said, “Yes, I’m alive and well!” It would be like a release for them to actually talk about the fact that they heard that I was dead and share how they felt when they heard.
That was the biggest rumour on Tortola. That is what you call fake news!
Sorry for losses
I thought the whole thing was quite funny, but I’m sorry for all the losses that people have experienced and the people that have died during and after the storm. Because dealing with a tragedy of this magnitude and then having to deal with burying your loved one — I know that’s hard on a lot of people. Dag is a major loss.
Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Freeman Rogers.