Here's the first credible press story I've seen about Grand Cayman. It's from the Miami Herald (<a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9676383.htm?1c">link</a>):
<b>On Caymans' biggest isle, some pick up, some pack up</b>
Three days after Ivan raked the Cayman Islands, some were beginning to clean up, but many others -- natives and tourists -- were trying to leave.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES AND CURTIS MORGAN
jcharles@herald.com
<b>GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman</b> - The stunned and shaken stretched for at least a half-mile outside the battered main airport hangar, everyone waiting, hoping to get out.
Growing piles of suitcases filled the parking lot. Cars were parked for miles along the airport road, left by those who joined the line for a precious ticket out. Others killed the wait playing cards on the hoods of their cars.
Three days after Hurricane Ivan raked this largest of the Cayman Islands, pushing a wall of water into downtown banks and beachside hotels and homes, a Herald journalist was the first reporter to arrive and file an eyewitness account of Ivan's destruction. Some people were beginning to pick up but many others were packing up -- natives and tourists alike.
Cayman islanders Richard Collett and Kirsten McMillan, cuddling 4-month-old Jacob, dressed only in diapers because of the stifling heat, were awaiting a charter to England after knee-high flood waters and a collapsed roof left their home in South Sound, south of the capital city, a gutted mess.
''Even the fish were swimming in our living room,'' Collett said. They didn't expect to return for at least six weeks.
They were far from the only homeless. The government of the British territory issued a preliminary estimate that Ivan had left half the island's 15,000 private homes uninhabitable. Almost no one had power, and there were shortages of gas and water and growing fears about food. The government imposed a 6 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew.
Conditions were far better on the other two islands, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, farther from Ivan's fiercest winds.
<b>`A MIRACLE'</b>
Still, almost everyone seemed amazed things were not worse.
The government said no one had been killed and there were no reports of missing persons on an island of 39,000. By comparison, Ivan killed 39 people on Grenada.
''I think this was a miracle,'' said Denise Cummings, whose husband is acting administrator of the Cayman Islands Hospital. The Sunday Ivan hit, police and emergency workers were besieged with terrified calls. The sea rose 4 ½ feet in her home. She expected to see casualties, and rumors of bodies persist.
''The calls were coming in, calls from people in distress, their roofs collapsing, the water rising above their waists and to their necks,'' she said. ``All we could do was tell them to get to the highest points.''
The damage is widespread and serious, some of the worst along the island's top tourist spot, Seven Mile Beach. Virtually every hotel appears to have suffered a significant hit. The Marriott had a gaping hole in its facade, a collapsed ballroom ceiling and extensive flooding. One whole side of the Comfort Suites is gone.
A spokeswoman for the Cayman Islands Tourism Office in New York City said the government had not yet assessed damage to hotels but other important buildings had escaped devastating damage.
Though part of its roof was ripped away, Owen Roberts International Airport was operating for limited flights, all for emergency relief. The hospital was running on a generator.
Along the waterfront and main business sections -- home to international banks and businesses that make the Caymans the wealthiest and most stable islands in the Caribbean -- most buildings were still standing, but many had crumbled metal roofs. Banks were expected to open today for residents and as early as Monday for international trade.
The government said emergency relief -- fuel, food, water, generators -- was on the way, along with 45 electrical workers by week's end.
<b>RUMORS ABOUND</b>
Still, rumors were rife -- of dead bodies, prison escapes and looting. One Internet site posted what claimed to be a letter from a phone exec asking for U.S. military help to safeguard transmission lines.
While most people seemed to be staying calm, some nerves were clearly fraying.
At the airport, five Air Jamaica agents had to fend off the pleadings of nearly 1,000 people encircling them to grab a seat on one of two outbound flights.
An airline employee finally grabbed a bullhorn and mounted a flatbed truck to quell trouble. ''There are only 185 seats on board,'' she bellowed. ``If you are able-bodied, please allow women with children and the elderly to go first.''
Vincent Dale, a university student doing missionary work in the Caymans, said he wasn't too upset about not making the flight. He could survive, he said, but he longed to be back home in Jamaica, which escaped with a lighter brush from Ivan.
''There is no food here. Things are getting scarce,'' he said. ``At least when I am back home there are friends I can talk to and give comfort to.''
<i>Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles reported from the Cayman Islands; Nancy San Martin and Curtis Morgan contributed from Miami.</i>
