Vacation

Casey: A vacation interrupted by a hurricane

Twenty-five Bookbag Santa travelers from the Roanoke region had to be evacuated from the Caribbean fishing village of Placencia, Belize, under an advisory issued by the U.S. State Department related to Hurricane Earl, which struck Belize Aug. 4. Another hurricane flattened the town of 1,000 back in 2001.



“I grabbed two shirts and a clean pair of underpants, and put them in my backpack,” said Katie Letcher Lyle, an author and retired professor who lives in Lexington. She emailed me an account of her storm adventure last week.

“We were told to take with us just the bare necessities, stuff we couldn’t afford to lose, like our passports and electronics,” said Leslie Santapaul of Wirtz, another Bookbag Santa traveler. “Some of us wanted to stay. In hindsight, we would have been safe where we were. But the State Department wanted us to move.”

The evacuation was organized by the Sea Spray Hotel, where the travelers stayed, and Splash Dive Center, a vendor that handled adventure day trips for the group.

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