Contracted Canadian aircrews among first outsiders to witness Irma's wrath

It was sunrise on Thursday when Wade Fleet arrived in the cloud-ripped skies over St. Maarten.

He had followedin the devastating wake of Hurricane Irma and the air around the popular Caribbeanresort island was still choppy and turbulent.

As he swung his Dash 8 patrol plane low over the hills and forests of theisland, the dull daybreak gradually revealed the awful extent of the devastation.

"Pictures really don't give the impact of what I saw," Fleet told CBC News.

He and seven other Canadian pilots, working for Newfoundland-based PAL Aerospace, fly two of the turboprop planes under contract to the Dutch coast guard.

They are among the first Canadians to see the devastation.

The crews, led by Fleet, launched into the predawn darkness from their base in Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela, as the powerful Category 5 hurricane released its grip on the eastern Caribbean early Thursday.

Aerial footage shows Hurricane Irma's destruction in St. Maarten

7 years ago

Duration 1:00

Footage taken by pilots working for Provincial Airways shows the devastation on St. Maarten as a result of Hurricane Irma's 300 km/h winds

Their first mission was reconnaissance.

They overflew Barbuda, St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatius, and finally St. Maarten, an island whose territory is dividedbetween the Netherlands and France (St. Martin).

Debris as far as the eye could see

Having flown over Haiti during previous hurricane disasters, Fleet knew what to expect, but the magnitude of what unfolded beneath his wings in the morning light was breathtaking.

"It's an island that virtually doesn't have infrastructure anymore," he said in a telephone interview from the company's base of operations.

"There is no power. There is no running water. Most of the supermarkets were completely destroyed. So, there is not really any food."

His plane swooped down over grand, luxury yachts bashed ashore and reduced to matchsticks.

He banked over spacious, concrete tourist hotels with entire chunksclawed out of them by the 300 km/h winds, waves and debris.

"They're just gone," he said.

Fleet said he is aware a number of visitors chose to ride out the storm on the island rather than flee, and the Royal Dutch Marines, whom his pilots delivered in the second mission later in the day, received a flashlight SOS signal as the sun was going down from the fifth floor of one of the hotels.

"I think it's going to be a little while before we know what the death toll is," said Fleet, who started hisflying careeras bush pilot in Canada's North. "A lot of people are trapped."

The island's power plant is heavily damaged and "will take a long time to get up and running," he said.

From the air, there were signs of life.

"You can see people on the street. They're trying to move stuff off the street," he said. "As we flew over, you'd see people waving."

The scene reminded him of television images of the pulverized war zone streetsof Aleppo, Syria.

The outer wall on the island's prison has been breached, and while Fleet said he doesn't know if there had been any escapes, his relief flights have carried a number of Dutch troops and police.

Race against time

There are 75,000 residents on St. Maarten and another hurricane the Category 4 Jose is bearing down on the region.

The focus of each of the follow missions, on Thursday and Friday, was rushing relief supplies food, water and tents to the residents before the next storm hits.

Dutch marines have managed to clear the runway at the island's main airport, but fuel shortages hamper their efforts to move around on the ground.

They are racing against the clock, said Fleet.

People who survived Irma face exposure and further peril, a notion that brought with it a pang of guilt as he surveyed the wreckage.

"It's easy for me. You're flying over this and you get to go home and see your family," Fleet said.

"I think about the people down there. When the sun goes down it's pitch black. There's no power."

Irma is expected to slam into Florida over the weekend and draw away media attention from the tiny islands that have already felt the hurricane's wrath.

"My fear is, the fantastic people I know in those islands are going to be forgotten in the wake of that as the story becomes bigger, if you know what I mean," he said.