We have a place on St. John that we rent when we are not there.  Last week the island got hit by Catogory 5 Irma and was destroyed!  Our beautiful, lush island looks like it was nuked.  The only info we get is on Facebook or UTube.  Survivors climb up to the 3rd floor of the remaining part of the building to get a cell phone tower on St. Thomas (a Verizon tower).  The pictures and commentary is awful...all gone.  And we are getting first hand accounts of confrontation, looting and panic.  The 5,000 on the island were completely cut off from St. Thomas and had to fend for themselves until the St. Croix police arrived yesterday the 12th.  St. John is basically two population groups separated by the National Park and everything is impassable.  Cruz Bay is the enterance town and looks out to St. Thomas 3 miles accross the Drake Passage.  The looting took out 4 ATM machines and restraunt contents.  One restraunt (Cruz Bay Landing) got its kitchen working and fed 700 meals reported last Friday.  They also reported to be low on diesel for the generator and just about out of food.  We hear almost nothing from the other end (Coral Bay) except that Island Blues, Indigo and Skinny Legs (that's about all there is) are gone!  We know about 25 residents of the island and have not directly heard from any of them (Cassie volunteers at Ms. Parsons 4th grade and she lost her house we saw on a facebook post).  The only news we have on our villa is from a 4 second clip from a small helicopter of our area, and I think I can see our place with its roof intact.  This is a good start.  Of course there is debris every where else and not a tree or anything green on the whole island. 

Update on our place on St. John...We made it!  The wind probably came from the North and West and we are protected by 300 more feet of mountain.  Looks like everyone on our street came through with only minor damage, but there are no trees or leaves.  I'll go down there when we get electric and the airport opens on St. Thomas.  We go a call on the 15th from our landscape friends and our house manager, and both told us that nothing visible is damaged!  No one has been inside, but as long as we are standing, we'll take it.  So far, all the friends we heard from lost their home!  We may have a lot of sleep overs.