TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Club Orient 28 Jan 2018 video

While viewing youtube found a video taken yesterday of the condition of Club Orient taken by Darius ben. He has posted videos on many parts of the island. Know that many on this forum visit Club Orient, unfortunately here is the latest video of the conditions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc2-SyPtGc

I wish he would visit Simpson Bay Resort. Our Units C11A and B lost roof and have windows blown out.

Surprised at all the debris still on the ground. Not much cleanup effort going on.

Sad, that is the current condition.

That has been one of the big complaints and is mentioned with regularity here. Lack of effort and progress all over the French side and especially Orient Beach area.

Very sad indeed and in many ways.

We talked to the president & a general manager of the owners association at club orient. They are dealing with insurance people & the government right now.
Based on that we believe they are waiting on agreements before making any major financial commitments. The rubbish & damaged buildings do not interfere with the beautiful clean beach, ocean , beach chairs, umbrellas, massage beach hut, perch lite & the recently built boutique beach hut. Also ample room for parking near the perch lite.

In our 3 weeks we have seen huge effort & progress on the french side of the island. Big dump trucks & big back hoes steadily working away many nights as well up & down the roads. Didn't know mercedes had dump trucks . Also garbage is picked up nightly from the bins. Our observations.
Hope they help to get a picture.

Thanks for that positive information Jeepers! It's easy for us armchair visitors to criticize the cleanup process. The enormity of the whole process is overwhelming if one understands that breadth of damage caused by Irma.

Thanks so much for the post. Sad, but informative.

The property is not safe to navigate and curious trespassers should not leave the public beach. If nothing else signs or ropes should be used to block off dangerous areas.

If someone is trespassing they deserve what they get IMO

If you have insurance adjusters still computing you don’t want to interfere with the final computation.

This is the clearest videos I’ve seen thus far none of the studios or mini suites we’ve occupied remain.

Amazing what the forces can do. They might be able to rehab a few units. Who knows.

I see some big tonka equipment chewing up and hauling some of that concrete away.

Assuming insurance is sufficient to rebuild something I think what to rebuild also depends on future insurability.

Given the encroachment I suspect they’ll be further back, elevated and all concrete. If not,they should make them out of cheap paper Mache sonto speak. Easy to repeatably rebuild in ad finitum.

Wish they had walked to front desk boutique for closeup. Papas too.

I wonder how much of that was the storm and how much was from the looters?

That video left me slightly sick to my stomach.

I was a bit leery of listing this post because of its sad content. Since IRMA I like many of you have been following the internet to see how our beloved island has suffered. The videographer Darius ben appears to be an islander who has documented the the impact from the days following the storm to present. He has shown the cleanup efforts over the past months and unfortunately also brought us "up close and personal" to the extent of the damage. I was particularly shocked at his view of one of the units which had been moved off its footings by the severity of the storm. If you view this youtube video, check his others - the scenes at Maho are also terrifying, but there is hope in that some of the vendors in what is left of the Marigot marketplace are selling their wares. SXM Strong also has listed some videos to youtube talking to some of the survivors in their cleanup efforts.

when we were there in between Christmas and NY, we saw 2 looters. One was a pickup truck leaving on the Club O road. It was full of sliding door frames and doors. The other was a car full of sinks and other items. On the roof was a bathtub.