Santa Barbara Couple Airlifted Out of Hurricane Stricken Cabo San Lucas
A Santa Barbara couple is back home after being stranded in Cabo San Lucas.
Hurricane Odile slammed the Mexican resort town on Sunday.
Matthew and Tammy Zybura were in Cabo for a surf trip and to celebrate Tammy’s birthday.
They were aware a storm was coming, but say there were no warnings about just how hard Odile would hit.
“It changed just like that, gosh half way through Sunday. I get chill bumps thinking about it. I thought we’re in trouble this thing is not going to go off to sea. This is going to hit us directly. This is not good at all,” Tammy Zybura said.
The couple hunkered down in their room for hours.
“We had a couch and everything up against the sliding glass doors. We had our shoes on and we had a backpack ready, not knowing where we would go. But we were waiting for the door, the sliding glass door or the roof to come off. It was the worst sound and feeling,” Zybura said.
The next morning, the couple went outside and saw the devastation firsthand. The power was out and people started looting.
The Zybura’s say they were lucky because their hotel had food, water and the cooperation of the other hotel guests.
“We were one of the good stories. Our hotel was small, only 30 guests and the hotel had a generator. It really turned from a vacation to a mission trip to a rescue mission,” Zybura said.
The Zybura’s helped clean up, spent time with the other hotel guests and waited for a way out.
Zybura says she watched Mexican military aircraft, including one carrying Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, fly by her hotel room.
“Finally the manager said you have to leave. It wasn’t a matter of us saying, ‘we’ll wait it out as long as we can help out’. It was ‘you have to go’. When that happened, that’s when I got nervous because we knew had no control over what was going to happen because we were in the hands of the government then,” Zybura said.
Three days later, the Zybura’s were flown out of the damaged airport with thousands of other stranded tourists.
They boarded a Mexican military plane and celebrated.
“We were really excited once we got on that plane. Everybody is cheering. We were like we did it. We made it out!” Zybura said.
