A COUPLE who were trapped in hurricane-ravaged Dominica have spoken of their terror to the Observer as they ran to get under the house where they were staying.

Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm, struck Dominica just over two weeks ago.

It was the most extreme hurricane to hit the island in recorded history, with wind speeds approaching 160 mph.

Sharon Daley, 47, of Slough, travelled to the island with her partner, Davis Joseph, 51, to visit his parents.

However, when they tried to arrange return flights they were told all flights were cancelled.

Miss Daley said: “I spent most of the day checking the internet regarding what was now Hurricane Maria – the last update was it had moved to Category 3, but should run alongside Dominica, with no direct hit expected.”

But by 7pm that day, the storm suddenly spiked to a catastrophic intensity. Miss Daley said: “The wind and rain was unbelievable.

“Once the hurricane started to kick off, we held on to the doors for an hour to stop the wind from caving them in. Then the ceiling started to collapse in on us – we went from room to room, trying to take shelter. We’d go to one room, but then the roof would be torn off, and we had to move again.”

After two hours of taking shelter in the disintegrating home, the winds started to lull. However, the couple suspected this was only the eye of the storm passing overhead, and feared the house would be destroyed completely when the winds returned.

Miss Daley added: “Davis said, ‘We’ve got to get under the house’. We ran out holding on to each other and just made it under the outside stairs to the house – we wedged a bed base in the space underneath it.” Hurricane Maria returned in its full fury just minuets later. For the next seven hours, the couple and Mr Joseph’s parents struggled to survive.

Miss Daley said: “The wind kept pulling the the bed base out, we kept having to pull it back. We stood the entire time – we had to hold on to the base, and there were hundreds of cockroaches and crabs swarming around us. Water was pouring on to us from above. The hours felt like a lifetime.”

At 7am the next morning, they emerged to scenes of total devastation. Their home was still standing, but the roof had been sheered off entirely and the interior was ruined. In the week that followed, the pair attempted to negotiate their way home, having to struggle through a total lack of essential service, scant fuel and transportation, curfews and armed police, flooded roads, and overbooked ferries.

Miss Dailey expressed her appreciation and thanks to the British Embassy and the UK’s Rapid Response team, which arranged for them and other UK nationals to be extracted out by Chinnok helicopter to the Royal Navy’s flagship, the HMS Ocean, and from there over to Barbados, through which the couple returned to the UK.

Visit the Dominica Hurricane Relief Fund at www.dominicarelief.org