Surviving Hurricane Odile: A First-Hand Account

by Claudette Covey
Last updated: 10:35 AM ET, Fri September 19, 2014

PHOTO: Hurricane Odile ripped through Los Cabos, causing untold damage. (All photos courtesy Natashia Stevenson)

Natashia Stevenson and her family are frequent visitors to Los Cabos, but their latest visit to the destination will probably be the most memorable, and for all the wrong reasons.

The Stevenson family, who reside in San Francisco and were staying in a private home, experienced the wrath of Hurricane Odile firsthand. "It was like something you see on the news," she said. "We saw things like looting and the kids were really scared."

Stevenson, along with her boyfriend and five kids - including an infant - spent the night Hurricane Odile made landfall in the beachfront home they had rented. "We were just 100 feet from the beach and there were so many windows in the house," she said. "There was no place we could stay that was far from a window so I just covered the baby with my body."

As night progressed into early morning the house continued to flood. "We all went into one room and the kids pulled all the lounge chair mats onto the floor and slept on those," she said, until that room too began to flood. "We all piled onto beds and chairs and anything we could. The kids were crying and scared all night."

The next day the streets were flooded and all the windows in the houses surrounding theirs were broken. The windows in their house remained intact. "I don't know how we got so lucky," she said.

They decided their best strategy would be to move from the house to a hotel closer to the airport. "We went to a bunch of different hotels and no one would take us," Stevenson said. After being turned down by property after property, they tried the Cabo Surf hotel. "I think they took pity on us because we had five children with us," Stevenson said, adding that it didn't hurt that they'd stayed there before.

The hotel itself had incurred a fair amount of damage, Stevenson said. It was without power or running water.

They spent three nights there. "It was hard because I was doing things like changing dirty diapers in the dark and couldn't even wash more hands - so it was scary. I thought, someone's going to get sick," she said. "And people were stepping on nails and it felt really unsafe, and it was so hot. The baby just nursed and sweated the entire time."

After the third day, the family decided to try their luck at the airport. "It would be nice if people knew that if you went to the airport you'd get airlifted out," she said. "We did not know this. We just drove there and got in line."

Because they were traveling with an infant the family didn't have to wait terribly long for a flight. "They were letting women and children go first," Stevenson said. "We left at four in the morning to go to the airport and we were on a flight by 10 a.m."

There were planes going to Guadalajara, Mexico City and Mazatlan. They boarded a chartered Interjet flight to Guadalajara. "From there we got tickets to Phoenix, which were originally $1,400 each but they took pity on us and they discounted them to $900 each," Stevenson said. "So that was the most expensive hurricane I've ever been in."

The family is now back in San Francisco and relatively unscathed from the experience, although Stevenson did say that every family member has a doctor's appointment. "The baby has a cough and an ear infection, my 15 year-old has bug bites that look like there's blood under the skin, and my daughter hurt her foot tripping."

Even after all that happened, Stevenson said she and her boyfriend would go back. "I asked my boyfriend and he immediately said yes," she said, adding that they love the Cabo Surf hotel - and the fact that Cabo is so convenient to reach from San Francisco. "I would go back," Stevenson said.