While living in shelters since Hurricane Irma, Rose Herbert has struggled to care for her husband Rupert, a stroke victim who needs extensive assistance with basic tasks such as eating, walking and using the bathroom. Their Fahie Hill home was destroyed during the Sept. 6 storm, and she is not sure what they will do next. Photo: FREEMAN ROGERS

In recent days, Rose and Rupert Herbert have been sleeping on a comforter on the wood floor of the Multi-purpose Sports Complex, which is serving as a shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Irma.

While living in shelters since Hurricane Irma, Rose Herbert has struggled to care for her husband Rupert, a stroke victim who needs extensive assistance with basic tasks such as eating, walking and using the bathroom. Their Fahie Hill home was destroyed during the Sept. 6 storm, and she is not sure what they will do next. Photo: FREEMAN ROGERS
Few people would find the arrangement comfortable, but for Ms. Herbert and her husband, a 79-year-old who is largely incapacitated from two recent strokes, it is almost unbearable.

Nevertheless, they’re glad to have shelter, said Ms. Herbert, who has to assist her husband with the most basic tasks, including bathing, eating, using the bathroom and walking.

The two have been staying in shelters since the day before Hurricane Irma, when they left their wooden house in Fahie Hill for fear it would be destroyed.

“I leave from the first hurricane, and I haven’t been back since,” she said.

They now know they were right to be afraid: Their grandson told them that the house was destroyed in the storm.

“The house is flat, so I don’t have anywhere to live,” she said, adding, “We lost everything.”

Difficulties

Shelter residents help Ms. Herbert when they can, but she struggles to lift her husband and carry out other tasks necessary to care for him.

“I can’t leave him and go around because I can’t leave him alone,” she said.

She added that she is supposed to take him to physical therapy on a regular basis, but she hasn’t had a chance to do so.

“I’m trying my best myself to give him a little [massage]: Bring in the foot, bring it out; … and then do his hand, because he could move the hand,” she said of her husband, who retired from the BVI Electricity Corporation. “And then his mouth and things like that.”

There is a limited number of cots available at the shelter at the Multi-purpose Sports Complex. Photo: FREEMAN ROGERS
She also worries that her husband isn’t getting enough food in the shelter.

“They give us sandwiches, and he have to take medication and he come like he’s not full, because he’s biting up his hand,” she said. “The medication have to have something to feed on.”

Soon, she said, she hopes they can travel temporarily to her native St. Kitts.

“But what happened is there’s no plane running, and it’s difficult to carry him up and down,” said Ms. Herbert, a retired domestic worker who has lived here since 1967.

No cots

Although the Multi-purpose Sports Complex has certain advantages, she preferred staying in St. George’s Episcopal Church, where the shelter was previously located.

“At the church we was sleeping on the benches,” she said, adding that the complex has run out of cots. “At this one you have to sleep on the floor.”

In spite of the challenges, she was extremely grateful to have a place to stay during Hurricane Maria on Wednesday.

“Let me tell you: Last night in here was banging like what because the thing in the roof there cracking up,” she said. “We didn’t get wet, and I thank God for that. Let us give God thanks and praise that our life was spared.”

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