Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Bahamas Hurricane: Water Level Rising About this episode Tara Pyfrom and her family live a life of idyllic bliss in the Bahamas. That is, until 2019 - when Hurricane Dorian makes landfall, plunging their peaceful island existence into chaos. As this record-breaking storm swamps the land, Tara’s house is engulfed - becoming a deathtrap. The family will have to go to increasingly extraordinary lengths just to keep their heads above water…
A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:04 John Hopkins? It's late August, 2019. Beneath a low-pressure system somewhere over the western Atlantic, a storm builds.
1:15 John Hopkins? As it moves further west, pushed along by trade winds, the tempest continues to grow in size and strength, sucking warm air from the ocean and converting it into powerful kinetic energy.
1:29 John Hopkins? It escalates quickly as it approaches land, from a Category 3 storm to a fearsome Category 4, bringing extreme winds capable of inflicting catastrophic damage.
1:41 John Hopkins? Less than 24 hours later, the day it reaches the easternmost shores of the Bahamas, the storm is upgraded again to the maximum deadly category, 5.
1:55 John Hopkins? As it rampages through the islands, the one comfort to affected residents is that at least the storm will keep moving. They always do.
2:05 John Hopkins? Soon enough, this nightmare will be behind them.
2:10 John Hopkins? But this storm is different. First, the hurricane's forward motion slows to an excruciating pace. Then, it comes to a complete standstill, stalled directly above the northernmost island of Grand Bahama, where it continues to wreak havoc for hours, then days.
2:32 John Hopkins? And at the heart of the vortex, right in the eye, is the small beach community of Freeport.
2:45 John Hopkins? 180 mile an hour winds pummel the hotel-lined oceanfront. Buildings strain at their concrete foundations. Palm trees are uprooted. Roofs are torn from their rafters and sucked, cartwheeling into the rain-filled air.
3:01 John Hopkins? Huge waves barrel down Main Street, smashing through souvenir shops, engulfing cars, sweeping away road signs.
3:10 John Hopkins? In the residential neighborhoods, gardens are inundated, homes deluged.
3:17 Speaker 03 We could see that our entire yard was covered in water. We were now an island. Just our house was an island. And, you know, terror, just total terror.
3:31 John Hopkins? Many of Freeport's 40,000 inhabitants have already evacuated. But some remain, whether by choice or necessity. A handful of resilient souls who now find themselves trapped in their houses, desperate and cut off from any rescue. Like 38-year-old Tara Pyfrom and her family.
3:54 Speaker 03 It's just, we don't know what to do. We can't go outside, we can't stay inside. And the water keeps getting higher. It's not slowing down. It's a couple of inches, and then it's another foot. And then it's... We're not dry on our kitchen counters anymore. The house is half-full of water. At that point, we're in danger now. We're in danger of drowning inside of our house.
4:24 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
4:47 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet Tara Pyfrom. Together with her wife Catherine and their six-year-old daughter Hazel, the Pyframs live a life of idyllic bliss in the Bahamas. Lazy afternoons by the pool, long strolls along the beach, sunsets over the ocean.
5:05 John Hopkins? That is, until September 2019, when Hurricane Dorian makes landfall and plunges their peaceful island existence into chaos.
5:18 Speaker 03 It's just pure terror. I mean, it's wind like you've never seen, trees are leaning at 45, 50, 90-degree angles, and there's so much water.
5:31 John Hopkins? Tara's home is engulfed. With the floodwaters rising, their house becomes a death trap, where they'll have to go to increasingly extreme measures just to keep their heads above water.
5:43 Speaker 03 Every disaster movie that I've ever seen, where the person or people are in the place that's filling up with water and their heads are pressed against the roof and they're breathing the last breath and, "I love you, I love you." That's what's going through my head. That's the worst-case scenario. That's how I'm gonna die.
6:01 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:35 John Hopkins? It's late August 2019 in Freeport, Grand Bahamas.
6:40 John Hopkins? Tara Pyfrom pushes a shopping trolley around her local supermarket.
6:45 John Hopkins? As she sweeps groceries into the cart, the 38-year-old periodically consults her list.
6:51 John Hopkins? Peanut butter, check. Tin soup, check. Crackers, check.
6:56 John Hopkins? Certain items always vanish from the shelves in the days leading up to a storm, which is why Tara has made an effort to do her shopping well in advance, before the panic buying begins.
7:08 John Hopkins? Even several days out from the storm's forecasted landfall, the store is busy than usual for a weekday afternoon. Apparently Tara wasn't the only one with this idea.
7:22 John Hopkins? The majority of Freeport's population are expats, lured to the Bahamas by the promise of sunshine and the gentle pace of life.
7:31 John Hopkins? Tara, however, is Bahamian, born and raised.
7:36 Speaker 03 My entire family tree, going back eight, nine generations, all born in the islands of the Bahamas. Lived there my entire life. My entire childhood was on a little tiny rock. Literally 300 people population, so taking a ferry to go to school every day kind of deal. So of course the ocean is hugely ingrained culturally, personally, emotionally, all of those things, very, very much a part of who I am.
8:10 John Hopkins? Tara drives through her quiet, tree-lined neighborhood.
8:14 John Hopkins? She pulls into a driveway in front of a pastel-blue bungalow with white-painted eaves, nestled in a glade of gently swaying palms. The screen door opens, and a dark-haired young woman emerges onto the porch, Tara's wife Catherine. Moments later, a beaming, bespectacled child scampers past Catherine on the steps and races towards the car. This is their six-year-old daughter Hazel.
8:41 Speaker 03 My wife Catherine and I, we just, we work really well together. We finish each other's sentences and yeah. I'm mad in love with my wife and I will go nuts and be really sappy about it. If you let me. And our daughter, super intelligent, super friendly, never met a stranger. Our child has never met a stranger.
9:02 John Hopkins? Then there are the non-human members of the family.
9:05 Speaker 03 We had four dachshunds, little sausage dogs with their long bodies and little legs. And we had a husky mix called Sky. And our four dachshunds were Pearl, Ginger, Nutmeg, and Copper. They were very much a part of our family.
9:25 John Hopkins? Five years ago, having just welcomed their daughter into the world, Tara and Catherine decided their small family needed a forever home. Though a bookkeeper by trade, Tara has a talent for architectural drawing. Catherine is an artist with a keen eye for interior decorating. They made the perfect team and set about creating their dream house. When construction finished a year later, their vision had become a reality. It was perfect, an oasis overlooking the ocean.
9:58 Speaker 03 It was our home, our little bubble. We are introverts by nature, so we spend a lot of time at home. We hid in a swimming pool so our daughter could swim anytime she likes. And quite frankly, we really enjoyed it too. The dogs were swimming with us constantly. So it was really very much a paradise for us.
10:20 John Hopkins? But this is a fragile sort of paradise. The Bahamas lie at the apex of the Atlantic hurricane belt, a stretch of ocean where warm water temperatures help fuel the development of hydro meteorological events.
10:36 John Hopkins? Hurricane season usually lasts from June to November. During these months, residents of the Bahamas hunker down and prepare for the inevitable. In recent years, however, as global temperatures rise, the intensity and frequency of the storms has increased exponentially.
10:56 Speaker 03 Hurricanes are just a way of life. There are always hurricanes. And traditionally in the past, there have been the big ones. Those are the ones that everyone remembers the names of. I mean, we have enough hurricanes that you forget the names of them unless they had a big impact. When I was in my late teens, we had what we thought then was the hurricane of our generation, was Hurricane Floyd. Terrible storm, terrible wind, category three, almost category four hurricane. So 150 mile per hour wind just completely wrecked boats and houses and trees and, you know, weeks without electricity. And that was the big one. And then there was another big one.
11:39 Speaker 03 And then there was another big one. And so the idea of having, you know, the one that everyone remembers becomes the ones that everyone remembers. We planned our home accordingly. We actually built an elevated foundation so that we were several feet up off of the ground. We invested in what they call hurricane impact windows. Your windows are secure for, you know, a piece of wood flying at your window at 150 mile an hour, it doesn't crack. All of those things to prepare for what we were expecting to happen.
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13:05 John Hopkins? As September approaches, Tara closely monitors the weather forecast. Reports of a developing storm system out over the Atlantic have stoked the community's collective anxiety. Is this the next big one? As the days pass, the warning signs stack up. On August 28, the tropical storm is upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, increasing in size as it surges across the Caribbean Sea. And over the next 48 hours, as it races north towards the Bahamas, it intensifies at an alarming rate. Category 1 increases to Category 2, then quickly to Category 3.
13:47 John Hopkins? Some take the decision to evacuate the islands or to retreat to community shelters, but Tara and her family are staying put.
13:57 Speaker 03 We have never chosen to leave because we've always done this. We've done it again and again and again, and never had threat to our lives personally. That coupled with the fact that we had five dogs. We can't leave them. We could put them in a shelter, but there are babies, there are children. We're not going to put them in a shelter. So we choose to stay.
14:27 John Hopkins? By now, the hurricane has a name: Dorian. All day, Saturday, August 31, Tara keeps track of its progress. There is still hope that the storm might dissipate before reaching them, or that the wind will change direction and spare them from a direct impact. But as the day wears on, this hope dwindles.
14:50 Speaker 03 The storm got closer, and then the storm got bigger, and the storm got stronger, and then the anxiety really kicked in. Okay, this isn't just another hurricane. This is monumental.
15:11 John Hopkins? It's early Sunday morning, September the first.
15:15 John Hopkins? Tara emerges onto the sunlit back porch and sits down on the top step.
15:21 John Hopkins? She closes her eyes and breathes in slowly.
15:27 John Hopkins? The weather is warm and still, the windless air heavy with the sweet scent of flowers.
15:35 John Hopkins? The canal, which borders the bottom of their yard, is as flat and motionless as concrete. But there is a sinister edge to this tranquility. Dorian is forecasted to make landfall tonight, making this the calm before the storm. Tara tries to relax, but it's easier said than done.
15:57 Speaker 03 What's the tide gonna be when the storm gets here? And is that gonna mean that the storms are just gonna be higher or lower? Should I put the barbecue grill in the shed? Or should I bring it in the house? All of these kind of random things running through your head while I'm trying to be calm and relaxed. That didn't work very well.
16:14 John Hopkins? Tara spends the rest of the day prepping the house.
16:18 John Hopkins? She puts up the hurricane shutters, moves the patio furniture inside, and drags sandbags into position at the base of the doors. She and Catherine constantly refresh their social media feeds for news updates.
16:32 John Hopkins? By late morning, the storm has reached the Abacus Islands in the east of the Bahamas. Next stop: Grand Bahama and Freeport.
16:44 John Hopkins? And as evening draws in, sure enough, the wind picks up. Then the rain starts, right on cue.
16:52 Speaker 03 We went to bed, checked the weather. Storm's still doing the terrible things that it says it's going to do. Got up a couple of hours later, checked the weather again. And we have no electricity and no TV now. We're just on cell phones and data and whatever information we can get from that. And so we're, you know, sleeping a little, but not a lot. And the wind gets worse. It gets louder. It gets louder again.
17:24 John Hopkins? At about 4 a.m., Tara and Catherine abandon any hope of sleep. The decibel levels have risen to an incessant, rolling roar of torrential rain and thrashing palm fronds.
17:37 John Hopkins? Tara goes to the window. She takes a flashlight and presses it against the glass, thrusting a dim, yellow beam into the darkness.
17:48 Speaker 03 And we could see that our entire yard was covered in water. We were now an island. Just our house was an island. And, you know, terror. Just total terror.
18:03 John Hopkins? It's even worse than feared. Engorged by the surging ocean, the canal has burst its banks.
18:11 John Hopkins? Their lovingly cultivated garden has disappeared beneath a rough, brown sea pocked with heavy rain. The floodwater has risen almost level with the decking of the back porch.
18:25 Speaker 03 But at the same time, I'm in my head, "Okay, but it's, the water's out there, and the house is high, and we'll be fine. If we get a couple of inches of water inside, it's annoying, we're gonna have to, you know, get insurance money. It's gonna be a pain in the butt, but we'll be fine. A couple of inches, no big deal. The house is strong. We'll be fine." So I kept telling myself this. "We're gonna be fine." And it just kept getting worse.
18:50 John Hopkins? The water creeps across the decking. It trickles through cracks under the protective storm doors. It forces its way between the sandbags.
19:00 John Hopkins? It starts to spread across the open-plan kitchen and living area, flowing freely into every corner of the house.
19:12 John Hopkins? A frightened, bleary-eyed Hazel comes wandering out of her bedroom, a cuddly toy tucked under each arm, water sloshing around her ankles.
19:23 John Hopkins? Catherine sweeps her daughter into her arms and stares beseechingly at Tara. The dogs, four of whom barely stand a foot high, leap onto the sofa to escape the rising flood.
19:36 John Hopkins? A couple of inches quickly becomes a foot, then two feet.
19:41 John Hopkins? Tara looks around, dazed, as their home, their sanctuary, is overwhelmed.
19:56 John Hopkins? It's about three hours later. Tara, Catherine, and Hazel sit huddled on their kitchen island, listening to the car alarm wail from the driveway. Three feet of water now swamps the kitchen.
20:12 John Hopkins? Assorted domestic flotsam bobbs on the surface: a dog bowl, a flip-flop, a child's backpack.
20:20 John Hopkins? Eventually, the car alarm falls silent.
20:23 John Hopkins? The water must have finally fried the vehicle's electrics.
20:29 Speaker 03 At that point, we're in danger now. Like, if we're sitting on our kitchen island and the water's not slowing down and it's still rising, we're in danger of drowning inside of our house. And so we're having crazy conversations about swimming in a category-five hurricane, several hundred feet to our neighbors.
20:47 John Hopkins? They've posted an SOS on Facebook, but there's no way anyone's coming to get them. No rescue boats would brave this weather.
20:55 John Hopkins? Tara looks out of the rain-lashed windows. Through the chaos, she can discern the outline of their neighbor's two-story house, standing above the floodwaters like an island.
21:08 John Hopkins? But with 180 mile an hour winds churning the air, attempting to swim across to it would be sheer madness.
21:15 Speaker 03 It's just, we don't know what to do. We don't, we don't know what to do. We can't go outside. We can't stay inside. And the water keeps getting higher. It's not slowing down. It's another foot. And then it's, the house is half full of water. Every disaster movie that I've ever seen, where the person or people are in the place that's filling up with water and their heads are pressed against the roof and they're breathing the last breath and, "I love you, I love you." That's what's going through my head. That's the worst case scenario. That's how I'm gonna die.
21:49 John Hopkins? Catherine suggests climbing into the attic, her voice taut with dread.
21:56 John Hopkins? But Tara is firm. That is not an option.
22:01 John Hopkins? She has decided that there's now only one viable path to survival.
22:06 Speaker 03 The attic was mentioned and it was immediately, "No.
22:13 Speaker 03 If we go to the attic and the water reaches the attic, we're going to drown in the attic. There's no way out of the attic."
22:20 Speaker 03 And so that was the, we need to get out of the house. We have to get out of the house right now. I don't know where we're gonna go, but we have to get out of the house while we can.
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24:31 John Hopkins? It's Monday, September 2nd, 2019, in the Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian vents its fury upon the island community of Freeport, where a family of three is fighting to stay alive. After a fraught discussion, Tara has managed to convince her wife Catherine that it will be safer outside of the house than inside, where the rising water levels mean every room will soon be submerged. Tara lowers herself off the kitchen island. She grimaces as a foul drainage smell rises from the murky, chest-deep water. The storm surge must have backed up their septic tank.
25:14 John Hopkins? Trying not to breathe through her nose, Tara wades through the greenish-brown liquid. Catherine follows close behind, with six-year-old Hazel clinging to her neck.
25:27 John Hopkins? Navigating the flooded house is no small feat. But eventually, every member of the family, human and canine, is assembled by the window in the master bedroom.
25:40 John Hopkins? Tara heaves up the sash, bracing against the powerful surge of water and wind.
25:47 John Hopkins? Projectiles zoom through the air, roof panels and palm fronds, a length of chain-link fence, stray patio furniture.
25:56 John Hopkins? Still, safer out there than in here.
26:04 Speaker 03 I climbed out of the window, we got our daughter out the window, and we're like trying to tie each other together with an electrical cord. We had no rope. Terrified we're going to get separated by the waves, so we're tying ourselves together with electrical cords so that we can stay together.
26:20 John Hopkins? As well as the electrical cord, they have managed to source a waterproof mattress that might function as a makeshift raft.
26:29 John Hopkins? Catherine passes Hazel through the window and into Tara's arms.
26:34 John Hopkins? After fasting herself to Hazel with the cord, Tara places her daughter onto the mattress, which immediately drifts away in the current, until the tether pulls tight and the mattress holds still, straining against the cable.
26:48 John Hopkins? Now the dogs.
26:51 John Hopkins? Catherine picks one up and thrusts the soaked, trembling animal through the window to Tara, who deposits the dog on the mattress with their daughter.
27:00 John Hopkins? They repeat the process twice more, until three of the dogs are cuddled around Hazel, the mattress sagging beneath their combined weight.
27:09 John Hopkins? Tara reaches for the fourth. But as she does...
27:14 Speaker 03 The door to the room that we were accessing to get out, closed behind us with the water. And there were two dogs trapped in another room, and three dogs with us.
27:26 John Hopkins? The two remaining dogs, Copper and Sky, are now separated from Catherine by a solid wooden door, and a huge amount of water pressure forcing it shut.
27:36 Speaker 03 So, there was a lot of screaming, "No, leave them, they'll be fine, they'll be okay, we have to get out of the house, we have to get out of the house", a lot of panicked arguing. Catherine insisted she was not leaving the dogs.
27:47 John Hopkins? Ignoring the frantic protestations, Catherine wades back to the door and starts trying to force it open.
27:55 John Hopkins? Tara can only watch Aunt helpless as her wife repeatedly throws her weight against the frame.
28:02 John Hopkins? After a few determined shoulder barges, it finally gives way, sending Catherine tumbling forward with the rushing water. Tara's heart somersaults as her partner is wrenched out of sight.
28:18 Speaker 03 I can feel the electrical cord pulling on me where Hazel is, the waves are trying to pull her away from me. She's on top of the mattress. Three of the dogs are there with her and I keep keeping track of them. At the same time that I'm trying to find out Catherine's gone, I can't see her. Where is she? Is she gonna get back out? Should I go back in? Should we all go back in? Just a million things at the same time.
28:41 John Hopkins? Tara cranes her neck above the water, but there's no sign of Catherine.
28:46 Speaker 03 Just second to second, minute to minute, like there's no planning. You can't plan what you're gonna do if Catherine doesn't come back. It's just waiting. Longest several seconds of my life.
28:58 John Hopkins? Then, after an agonizing delay,
29:02 John Hopkins? Catherine reappears in the doorway with two frenzied dogs squirming in her arms. She waves across the room and shoves Copper and Sky through the window, which is now almost entirely underwater.
29:18 John Hopkins? Catherine takes a breath and dives, squeezing through the small submerged gap and resurfacing breathless on the other side.
29:28 John Hopkins? At last, the whole family is out of the house. The question is, what now?
29:40 John Hopkins? They stand on tiptoes, grim smelling water lapping at their chins, bellowing to be heard over the ear-splitting roar of the wind.
29:49 John Hopkins? Suddenly, one of the dogs shifts its weight. The mattress capsizes, jettisoning its precious cargo.
29:57 John Hopkins? Tara leaps forward, grabs Hazel, and hoists her back onto the mattress. The six-year-old straightens her glasses as she gulps down air. Catherine plucks the yelping dogs out of the water and returns them to the makeshift raft. Disaster averted, this time. But it's becoming clear that leaving the house might not have been the right decision after all.
30:23 Speaker 03 Our daughter's screaming. I want to go back inside. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Our six-year-old is screaming. I don't want to die. I will hear that for the rest of my life.
30:35 John Hopkins? Tara turns to look over at the neighbor's house.
30:39 John Hopkins? Squinting through the maelstrom, the building looks even more distant than it did before. A faint silhouette, separated from them by a raging torrent of seething brown water.
30:51 John Hopkins? Tara adjusts her feet, straining her toes for contact with the porch decking.
30:57 John Hopkins? Pretty soon, they'll be forced to swim, and it will only get harder to stay together as they battle against the fierce currents and flying debris.
31:06 John Hopkins? For Tara, the next decision they make comes down to a single terrifying choice.
31:12 Speaker 03 Do we drown now or do we drown later? If we stay outside, we're going to drown now. We have to go back inside.
31:22 John Hopkins? It's a few minutes later.
31:25 John Hopkins? With their precious cargo in tow, Tara and Catherine work their way gingerly around the edge of the house, back to the bedroom window.
31:34 John Hopkins? They've been outside for a grand total of 30 minutes, and they've seen enough.
31:40 John Hopkins? However bad it was inside, anything is better than this.
31:45 John Hopkins? But getting back in is going to be considerably more difficult than getting out.
31:49 Speaker 03 The water had risen enough that the entrance to get back in the house was now underwater. So we had to dive under the water to go through the window to come back up on the inside where there was air.
32:03 John Hopkins? The window is nearly 20 inches underwater.
32:08 John Hopkins? This time Catherine goes first. Once again, she takes a deep breath and disappears below the surface. A few seconds later,
32:19 John Hopkins? a muffled shout is heard through the wall. She's in.
32:23 Speaker 03 And it was grab a dog, push it under the water, through the window into Catherine's arms for five dogs, including the 50-pound husky that we had to force out the first time. We now had to force back in.
32:37 John Hopkins? Sharp claws scratch Tara's skin. A skye frantically paddles through the window and into Catherine's arms.
32:46 John Hopkins? Tara comes back up. She lifts Hazel off the mattress and gently guides her daughter beneath the surface towards the window.
32:56 John Hopkins? Hazel swims through the opening, her little limbs wriggling through the water with natural ability, a true child of the Bahamas.
33:06 John Hopkins? Finally, it's Tara's turn. Without hesitating or dwelling on what they're returning to, she draws air into her lungs and swims back inside the house.
33:19 Speaker 03 And suddenly, it was calm. It was relatively quiet. Outside was so loud with the storm and so rough and such a constant struggle with the waves to keep our heads above water that just getting back into the house was calm.
33:37 John Hopkins? But the peaceful lull doesn't last long.
33:41 Speaker 03 And it was calm for 30 seconds. Because then it was, now what? We're not out of danger, we're just out of immediate danger. Now what? We've got three feet of space left in this room before it fills up and the water is still rising.
34:02 John Hopkins? It's now about 11 a.m. And Tara's home is almost entirely underwater.
34:09 John Hopkins? Hazel and the dogs are packed onto the floating double bed, which is wedged against the ceiling by the ends of the bedposts.
34:18 John Hopkins? With the surface still rising and the hurricane showing no signs of abating, their only option now is to position themselves as high up as possible. And that means resorting to a place that Tara earlier dismissed outright: the attic.
34:36 John Hopkins? If the water continues rising while they are up there, there will be no escape. But what choice do they have?
34:44 Speaker 03 Our decisions are not working out so well. Consensus was, go to the attic. There's no other option, and I conceded to the, yeah, there's no other option now.
34:55 John Hopkins? Tara opens the ceiling hatch and pulls down the retractable ladder.
35:00 John Hopkins? She and Catherine load Hazel and the dogs up through the hatch. Before climbing up themselves, they grab a rucksack filled with food, medication, dry clothes, and a few important legal documents.
35:13 John Hopkins? As she steps onto the ladder, Tara takes note of the water level.
35:18 John Hopkins? It's currently sitting just above the third highest ladder rung. How much longer until the next rung disappears? And the next?
35:29 John Hopkins? Tara hauls herself through the hatch and into the attic.
35:34 John Hopkins? In truth, attic is a generous word for this dark, dusty crawl space.
35:40 Speaker 03 There's no real floor. You're standing on two-inch pieces of wood every three feet. In between that, there's insulation and drywall. So if you step in between these wooden bracing, you're gonna fall through. And it's pitch black. Like, it's really dark. So you try not to hit your head. You try not to fall through the ceiling, and you're trying to find somewhere to just sit.
36:04 John Hopkins? The family tries to get settled.
36:07 John Hopkins? Fortunately, they managed to find a couple of plastic storage containers, large enough for Hazel and the smaller dogs to sit inside.
36:15 John Hopkins? But with room for only one person per wooden rafter, Catherine and Tara are forced to sit apart, alone with their thoughts.
36:25 John Hopkins? Tara squeezes her wife's hand, then goes to find a place to situate herself.
36:33 John Hopkins? The hurricane is a never-ending cacophony, thundering in the darkness.
36:40 John Hopkins? Tara shuffles herself onto one of the hard timber joists. All they can do now is wait.
36:47 John Hopkins? Barely a minute has passed, however, before a new emergency presents itself.
36:54 Speaker 03 We realized after we got into the attic and kind of caught our breath for a second that we had food, but we had no water. We didn't know how long we were going to be there. And we knew that we needed water.
37:04 John Hopkins? After the exertion of the last few hours, dehydration will soon become a big problem.
37:12 John Hopkins? The bottles of water are kept in a kitchen cupboard. But going back down and navigating the underwater labyrinth of the house would be far too dangerous. And so Tara comes up with a more direct approach.
37:26 Speaker 03 I decided that I was going to walk across the attic to the other side of the house and figure out where the kitchen was. And then I was going to break a hole in the drywall ceiling and just reach in and grab the bottle out of the cupboard.
37:42 John Hopkins? Tara moves carefully between the ceiling rafters.
37:46 John Hopkins? Having drawn up the architectural blueprints herself all those years ago, she can visualize the precise layout of her beloved home. When she reaches what she believes is the right spot above the kitchen cupboard, Tara begins stamping on the drywall ceiling.
38:03 Speaker 03 I managed to break a hole in the ceiling. Not the right spot. Broke another hole. Okay, that's the right spot. Lean in to grab the water. Lean too far. And fall.
38:14 John Hopkins? As she reaches for the bottled water, Tara loses her balance.
38:20 John Hopkins? Stagnant floodwater rushes up her nose. Shocked, disoriented, she twists her body around and thrusts her head back up to the surface, coughing up the fetid liquid. After a few stabilizing breaths, Tara calls up to Catherine that she is okay.
38:39 John Hopkins? Keeping her head close to the kitchen ceiling in what is now the last remaining foot of breathing room, she swims to the cupboard and pulls out the bottles.
38:50 John Hopkins? She reaches up and pushes them through the hole into the attic. Mission accomplished.
38:57 John Hopkins? But now to the small matter of getting herself back up there.
39:02 John Hopkins? Tara hooks her fingers around the ragged edge of the hole in the drywall, and, after two unsuccessful attempts, manages to heave herself up.
39:13 John Hopkins? Back in the attic, she checks to see if any more ladder rungs have disappeared. Only one step is visible now.
39:23 John Hopkins? Tara positions herself on a wooden beam. She turns her attention to the weather outside, listening out for any indication that the storm's intensity might be diminishing.
39:35 Speaker 03 We're just listening to the weather, waiting for either that Hurricane I, which we knew would be very quiet and very calm. And if we heard that, that would mean that the storm is halfway over, so that at least we would have some time marker on how long this was going to last. But it never got quiet. The entire time we were in the attic, it was loud, like, super-duper loud. There's tree limbs hitting the roof, and the roof is creaking and groaning and cracking. And if you lean against the bracing of the roof, you can feel it moving. We've got nothing to tie ourselves down with. If the roof goes, we're going with it.
40:16 Speaker 03 And so, just sitting in the pitch black, listening to the storm, listening to the wind, waiting to drown, waiting for the roof to come off.
40:26 John Hopkins? For now at least, everything is holding.
40:30 John Hopkins? But as the hours pass, conditions outside don't improve. Ordinarily, hurricanes don't stay in one place for long. Their path of destruction moves forward continuously, pushed along by the prevailing wind. But this storm is behaving differently. As day turns to night, the conditions stay exactly the same. Hurricane Dorian seems to have stalled, directly above Grand Bahama, directly above Freeport, directly above the Pi From family home.
41:06 Speaker 03 All I kept repeating in my head was, "Please let the roof hold." Like, that's literally the only thing that was in my head, except for the couple of conversations with Catherine of, "Are you okay? Is Hazel okay? Are the dogs okay?" Aside from that, I'm sitting in the dark, with my eyes open, not seeing anything, just repeating the words, "Please let the roof hold," over and over and over and over, and a million, two million times, of just saying those same words.
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42:41 John Hopkins? It's 5:30 a.m., about eighteen hours since Tara and her family first went into the attic.
42:50 John Hopkins? She sits, hunched, on a length of wooden bracing.
42:54 John Hopkins? Her muscles and joints ache from hours spent in a state of constant full-body tension. Catherine sits a few feet away, while Hazel sleeps in one of the plastic storage containers, curled up under a blanket.
43:09 John Hopkins? All night long Tara has been listening to the raging storm. And as dawn starts to leak through the cracks in the ceiling, there seems to be a slight reduction in the strength of the wind. A barely noticeable easing of the rain.
43:25 Speaker 03 We used the cellphone flashlight that we had to check the water level. And we could just make out that one of the ladder steps that was disappeared had reappeared, and that was, the water's going down.
43:39 John Hopkins? Sure enough, as the morning wears on, the sounds of the hurricane continue to abate. Slowly, but surely.
43:48 Speaker 03 There was a decrease in the wind. And with that decrease in the wind, and the water very slowly receding, was, the storm is leaving. The worst of it is over. We're alive.
44:02 John Hopkins? Finally, at 11:00 AM, a full 24 hours after first climbing into the attic, Tara descends the ladder into the ruinous remains of her home.
44:14 Speaker 03 When I went down the ladder, the entire wall was open. So I could see into the rest of the house. The wall was gone. And the house looked like a bomb went off.
44:23 John Hopkins? Tara, Catherine, and Hazel wander through the dregs of the floodwater, dazed, gazing blankly at the catastrophe that surrounds them.
44:34 John Hopkins? Then suddenly, a figure appears on the back deck, dressed in a wetsuit, goggles, and fins. Tara stares, dumbstruck. Then the figure lifts up their mask, revealing a friendly face.
44:50 Speaker 03 It's our friend Jamie. And he is part of the Bahamas Air and Sea Rescue Volunteer Group. And they've come to get us. We're still blowing 90 mile an hour wind. He and three guys are out in an open boat, small boat, to come rescue people, and we're the first stop. And when I tell you that we just fell into his arms, we really did just fall into his arms.
45:18 John Hopkins? Moments later Tara, Catherine, Hazel, and all five of the dogs are squeezed onto a motorboat as it chugs through their flooded neighborhood.
45:30 John Hopkins? Gale-force winds still whip across the water. Debris continues to hurtle through the grey, rain-cloaked sky. And yet, conditions are improving. The worst has passed.
45:43 John Hopkins? Jamie takes the traumatised family to the local sailing club, which has been converted into an emergency holding area.
45:51 John Hopkins? The manager of the club provides them with food and dry clothes. But this is all just a short-term solution.
45:59 Speaker 03 This was not a shelter. It was not set up as a shelter. We couldn't go to any of the shelters on the island if we had been able to get to it at that point because we were still in the middle of a hurricane. We had dogs. None of the shelters take dogs. So we were still in a position of, we need to go somewhere. We can't stay here. Where are we going to go?
46:20 John Hopkins? The pifrons decide to head to the home of a relative, in the hope that they'll have room to accommodate all eight of them.
46:28 John Hopkins? Somebody in the shelter offers to give the family a lift. And so they pile into the cab of his truck and on to the next unknown.
46:38 John Hopkins? Driving through the devastated neighbourhood is a surreal experience.
46:42 Speaker 03 Weaving around flooded areas. Now we've got to take this street to get to that street. I have no idea where we're going. I've lived here for years. It's not recognisable. I don't know what street we're on.
46:53 John Hopkins? In the end, they don't make it to their relatives. A chance encounter reminds them that while Freeport's landscape has been wrecked beyond recognition, its community spirit remains unbroken.
47:06 Speaker 03 Met up with some other acquaintances along the way. Oh, I can help. Some of you guys get in with me because we're all piled one on top of each other in this single cab truck. And the other acquaintance is like, oh, come to our house. We've got lots of space. Come stay with us. Yeah, the dogs can come too. Come with us. And that's where we ended up. An acquaintance, someone we'd said hi to a half a dozen times in the school pick-up line. And they fed us. They gave us a place to stay. We had beds. We had electricity because it was a massive generator at this place. And just took care of us.
47:43 John Hopkins? The following day Tara and Catherine returned to their house, hoping to salvage whatever they can from the wreckage.
47:51 John Hopkins? But there is little to recover. Nearly all of their possessions have been destroyed or washed away. Their home barely more than a hollow shell.
48:03 John Hopkins? In the face of this loss, it seems moving on is the only way forward.
48:08 Speaker 03 We were far too traumatized to even think about trying to recover on island. We need to leave. We need to leave and we need to leave as soon as we possibly can. And so that's what we did. One of the first flights that came in with with supplies, went back to Florida empty. They took us and the dogs.
48:28 Speaker 03 We settled in Florida for a few months, figuring out what we're going to do. Very early on in the first couple of weeks, we we're not going back. We can't. I can't do that. I can't rebuild there again to know that the next storm is going to be worse. There are more and more and more storms. They've gotten this much worse in the course of our lifetimes. There is going to be another one. It's going to be just as bad as that one or worse. We survived it. I'm never going to be in the path of a hurricane again.
48:57 John Hopkins? The weeks following the storm are a blur of grief and bad dreams. Doubt clouds the family's future. And so Tara and Catherine resolved to do something bold and decisive.
49:09 Speaker 03 Three weeks after surviving a catastrophic hurricane and a near-death experience and losing everything, we decided to double down. And we moved to a place we had never been to before.
49:23 John Hopkins? In terms of weather, Canada couldn't be more different to the Bahamas. And this is precisely why Tara and her family decide to move there, gladly opting for the occasional blizzard over another hurricane.
49:42 John Hopkins? Almost two years later, Tara and Catherine do return to Freeport. They visit the empty plot where their home once stood, now long since demolished, and take one last look at the place that used to be their whole world.
49:57 Speaker 03 That was very much for us, a challenging one, in that, you know, this was a huge part of us. It was so much time and effort and love put into this place, this physical place. And then it was gone. There's a lot of sadness, there's a lot of grief in the loss. There is still a lot of grief in the loss. Grief stays with you. It's just nonlinear and has many different phases. I don't know that it will ever actually be fully processed.
50:26 John Hopkins? Hurricane Dorian was the strongest recorded hurricane in the Bahamas' history. It was also the deadliest, with more than 80 confirmed fatalities and hundreds more unaccounted for. Over 70,000 people were displaced, their homes destroyed, their lives upended.
50:45 John Hopkins? In the storm's aftermath, victims attributed their survival to many different factors: luck, courage, preparation. But for Tara Pyfrom, surviving Hurricane Dorian came down to something else.
51:00 Speaker 03 My love for my wife and my daughter. I think that that really is all it boils down to. Every decision, every burst of adrenaline that I didn't think I had, I wasn't surviving for me. In my mind, I was keeping them alive. They were keeping me alive, too. We were all keeping each other alive. But in the moment of the experience, I was doing everything I could to keep them alive.
51:29 John Hopkins? Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Glenn Gantz, a biologist from Utah who likes to take a walk—or a row—on the wild side.
51:40 John Hopkins? In August 2000, Glenn embarks on a daunting, never-before-attempted challenge: a 12-day rafting trip down northern Canada's perilous Firth River, alone. It's an extreme, backbreaking endeavor. But things take a serious turn when Glenn finds himself stranded on a narrow spit of land, and he realizes he isn't as alone as he thought.
52:09 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Glenn's story today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.
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