Offaly Man’s Flights Grounded After Hurricane Warning
Written 1 month ago by Angel Croitor
150,000 homes without power in South Carolina. Cars left behind submerged underwater. Floods that are over ten feet tall. Scenes naturally found in a disaster movie. One man from County Offaly was in South Carolina as the catastrophic hurricanes have devastated states in the US and he tells us what it was like first hand.
Joe Connolly was enjoying a vacation in South Carolina where he would have to take a connecting flight from Atlanta, Georgia to make it back home to Ireland. Hurricane Irma weakened as it passed through Florida and made it’s way to Atlanta, Georgia – forcing the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta to cancel hundreds of flights and leaving Joe behind in South Carolina for a few more days til the storm passed.
“I cant imagine what they were going through in Florida when we looked at what we were going through yesterday – we weren’t in the peak of it. I think there’s 10 recorded deaths so far in the US.”
Where Joe was situated in South Carolina meant that they were about 200 miles away from the eye but Joe says they still got a “fair battering”.
“In downtown Charleston, a lot of cars are submerged – we had a few tornado warnings as well – so we had to head into a room in the house with no windows.”
At first the governor had issued a state of emergency, ordered all hospitals and nursing homes to evacuate on Friday, and by Saturday morning they opened up an evacuation route for all of Charleston.
They were told to move their cars up to higher ground or multi-story car parks to get out of the low lying zone. The news over there had stated that the storm was as large as “Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi put together”.
Joe has to contact Delta Airlines to see what can be done about his flight and what they can do for him after today’s call. We wish him a safe and quick flight home as soon as possible.
