the caribbean needs help after irma avenuaged a series of islands. many people are running low on food, water, gasoline and other essentials. european countries are starting to deliver some aid after they were criticized for not doing enough fast enough. this is one of the destruction of st. martin, one of the islands that is reported significant looting. the situation there is desperate. the north is administrated by france, the south by the netherlands. both were leveled as irma roared think as a category 5 as we mentioned. look at the rubble the storm left behind. st. martin residents are anxious for aid to get there. i want to show you the first impression you get when you get to st. martin. we re on the dutch side right now. this is it.
the dutch coast guard on saint martin contacted him and asked him to help with missions after the storm hit. he was one of the first people to fly to the island and he s been flying three rescue missions a day. he joins us now on the phone to talk about what he s seeing. what s it like, wade? i ve been to that island. it s a beautiful island, both sides. the dutch side, the french side. what s it like now. it s devastating, actually. i did the first reconnaissance mission in just as irma was barely leaving. it was still pretty windy and the skies were just starting to clear, and it was shocking. the devastation there s really not a building that s not in some shape or form affected with i would guess about 75% of the buildings are uninhabitable. it s sad. i know the people as well there. because we fly in and out of there with search and rescue, it s a beautiful island and it s unfortunately just been
are day six. they were hit on wednesday. today is tuesday night. we are a week in. they have the help, the services, and the finances of some top tier companies. the netherlands for the dutch side and france for the french side, and yet, this is where we find ourselves a week in. i ll say one last thing. we understood why that was. this is an island. i know i m saying something obvious, but that means everything they need to rebuild and they need a lot, has to be flown in or brought in by boat, and that makes things a lot slower, anderson. i m glad you found a place. we wish you the best. we ll check in with you tomorrow. there s a lot more to focus on. we ve been trying to get as much word out about what is happening in the caribbean because that seems to be an escalating reality, frankly. it s not a story, it s
we may be down, we re not out right now. but everybody is working very hard. there are crews working around the clock to make sure that things like electricity, our sewers and such, are getting back online so that we can welcome everybody back to the keys. all right, thank you very much, representative raschein. i appreciate your time. as they re fighting to get back, it s a fight for survival in the caribbean where resources are scarce. i want to go quickly to st. maarten which was leveled by the category 5 storm. desperate there for food and for water, what are you seeing tonight? erin, i m going to give you the impression somebody has when they land in st. maarten and tell you about that right now because the airport on the dutch side, i m on the dutch side, is totally under military control. so you re talking emergency,
airport, which is the international side, that everybody uses, won t be reopening for months. commercial flights. and that s number one. number two is, of course, what s the situation for the people here. well, we just learned from the governor of st. martin on the dutch side that 85% of structures and buildings are uninhabitable. partly or totally destroyed. so that number alone puts the scale on the destruction here. there is little to no power. people are still eating the food that they stocked up on before the hurricane. and the water on the dutch side, they depend on the dutch military to give them water. the first signal that i m getting is that people are thirsty and people are hungry. not starving. but they re hungry because they re rationing themselves. this is the situation, and then on top of that, there is a security concern. in the first few days after this happened, they saw people looting. and people still feel unsafe.