Healdsburg family’s harrowing vacation

Healdsburg resident David Hagele said there’s no doubt he’ll be returning to the seaside resort town of Cabo San Lucas, carrying on an annual tradition of the past 10 years.

But after his family’s harrowing encounter last week with Hurricane Odile and the growing chaos that ensued, the next trip to the Baja California peninsula won’t be any time soon - the discomfort and fear of their last days there still too fresh.

He has zero interest in airports and tarmacs after a daylong vigil in the blazing sun Thursday among thousands of tourists dropped off by buses for emergency evacuation from the Cabo airport without provisions or any notion about what might happen next - and with two small children in tow.

“It was truly like a refugee situation: There’s no information, no direction, no nothing,” he said Sunday, safely back at home in Healdsburg. “Everybody’s just standing in line waiting, and the line’s not moving.”

Just a few days after he and his wife, Laurie, their two small children and his mother-in-law flew to safety from the hurricane-ravaged region, Hagele remains amazed, he said, by how little is known back home of the losses suffered there. He worries about the people he saw in town and the hotel staff who provided comfort despite facing problems of their own.

“We’ve never been through anything like that in our entire life,” the 45-year-old commercial real estate mortgage broker said.

Hagele, who owns a timeshare in one of the area’s large hotels, had been on vacation a week already in the waterfront Pueblo Bonito Rose Resort with his wife, their daughter, Charlotte, 3, son Jackson, nearly 2, and their grandma, Cindy Piccinini, when the Category 3 hurricane slammed the peninsula the night of Sept. 14.

In the hours beforehand, they had heard a storm was coming and had seen a few folks around town making preparations - stocking sandbags, for instance. One guy at a local lobster place was taking down his sign, however, and that “seemed kind of over-reacting,” given what they knew of the forecast.

There had been no official announcement or warning in town indicating that a destructive storm was headed their way, though hotel staff gave brief instructions about stuffing towels under doorways if water came in. Each room got a candle in the event the power went out, as well.

“We’re still wandering around like we’re on vacation,” Hagele recalled later. “We’re thinking, ‘Here comes a storm, so we can’t lay out tomorrow.’?”

By that night, he and his wife lay awake, each with a sleeping child nestled against them, listening to the racket of rain and 125-mph winds that shook the entire building, flooded the floor of their fifth-story room and sent windows, doors, cinder block walls and roofs crashing. Cars were turned over, palm trees snapped in two and utility poles uprooted around the town. Four people died in the storm.

It would be morning before they realized how bad it was, walking around town in the aftermath among people too stunned to react.

“It was like we were in (Hurricane) Katrina or any of these other disaster zones,” Hagele said. “People were walking around just dazed. You don’t know where to start.”

And in the “bubble” that was their hotel, where a generator produced some power and they still had cellphone service for most of that first day, at least, devoted staff members, likely ignoring their own losses at home, provided meals and moral support as the situation outside deteriorated and looting began.

There was little food or water to be had in town, no vehicle fuel and no power for most. There were reports that some tourists had been robbed. A sense of desperation was growing.

Rumors that the airport would be closed for weeks or a month were rampant. Official news was simply not available in the first few days, though by Wednesday hotel personnel assembled the resort’s 560 guests and informed them of an air evacuation plan scheduled for the region’s tourists the next day after buses delivered them all to the area’s airport.

That night, Hagele couldn’t sleep - aware that amid the darkened city only one building, the resort where his family slept, remained alight, beckoning, it seemed, anyone who might want to investigate what else it might have to offer that wasn’t available anywhere else. Two bonfires at the front and back gate provided light for hotel guards, and may have staved off anyone intent on looting, he said, but there would be no rest.

But the next day, Thursday, was far and away the worst, he said, as buses filled with tourists departed each resort on a schedule, delivering their passengers to the airport 45 minutes away where lines a mile long and six to eight people wide awaited them, with no one telling them what to expect.

Though the children were given a place in the shade of a building to wait, their parents had to take turns standing in line in the triple-digit heat. As the hours went by and nothing changed, Charlotte Hagele began feeling unwell, lost her color and wouldn’t drink, provoking fear that verged on panic in an environment without phone service or any prospect an ambulance could be available.

When the family finally boarded a flight, taking the last four seats on a plane to Los Angeles that evening, Laurie Hagele began to sob, her husband recalled.

David Hagele waited until the aircraft rose above the airport and a line of planes waiting to evacuate those who remained.

Now back at home, it is the citizens of Cabo he is thinking about, the loyal hotel staff now without work and the challenges they face as they try to recover.

He recalls the hotel worker who, two days after the storm, let Hagele’s crying daughter pick out a pink balloon and twisted it into an animal, restoring her smile.

“Who knows what his house is like, or even if he has a house,” Hagele said. “That’s why we’ll go back. Just not soon.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.

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Editor’s Note: This story has been altered to reflect the following clarification. David Hagele is a commercial real estate mortgage broker.