IRMA AFTERMATH | Dutch and French Caribbean struggle with harsh conditions

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten (AP) — Dominga Tejera picked her way around fallen palm trees rotting in mud as she returned home after a nine-hour workday as a hospital janitor on a Caribbean island that until recently seemed like paradise.

She collapsed into a small plastic chair that has served as a makeshift bed since Hurricane Irma ripped the roof from her home as it pummeled St. Martin as a Category 5 storm.

“It’s sad when you come home to this,” she said as she began to cry. “You try to stay strong in public, but once inside, you break.”

Hundreds of people across an island shared by Dutch St. Maarten and French St. Martin are trying to rebuild the lives they had before the hurricane hit, celebrating little things like a rare evening breeze that clears the stifling air amid a widespread power outage and laughing as a radio announcer cheerfully announces, “The dentist is open!”

But many like Tejera are struggling to maintain a semblance of the life they had before Irma as they fight off hunger and thirst.

“There’s no food here. There’s no water here,” said 70-year-old Germania Perez.

Help was making it to the island, from the Dutch and French governments, other nations and private organizations. A French military ship with supplies was due to arrive Tuesday, coinciding with a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, who arrived Tuesday in Guadeloupe, the first step of his visit to French Caribbean islands.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who arrived on Monday, said the scenes of devastation he witnessed on St. Maarten in the hurricane’s aftermath were the worst he had ever seen.

In images broadcast by Dutch national network NOS, Willem-Alexander said: “I’ve never experienced anything like this before and I’ve seen a lot of natural disasters in my life. I’ve seen a lot of war zones in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Willem-Alexander said he was encouraged to see residents already working together to rebuild the shattered capital, Philipsburg. He was scheduled to fly Tuesday to the nearby Dutch islands of Saba and St. Eustatius, which also were hit by Irma, but suffered less damage than St. Maarten.

Hundreds of tourists are still trying to leave the island, with dozens lining up outside the Princess Juliana Airport, where only five large letters of its name remains.

One unidentified passenger abandoned a Yorkshire terrier named Oliver, tied to a barricade with airport security tape, as some people were told they could not bring pets. The tiny dog was later rescued by a local resident who took pity on him.