Eye of the Storm

It was supposed to be a fun-filled diving excursion, but it ended up becoming much more.

Stan Levey, who has been legally blind since childhood, hadn’t planned on getting caught up in Hurricane Mitch when he and 28 members of his dive club left the San Fernando Valley for Honduras on Oct. 24.

Bright sunshine, blue skies and puffy white clouds gave no hint of the tempest to come when the Whalers Dive Club arrived at the Bay Island Beach Resort on Roatan, a tiny island off the country’s northern coast.

The experienced divers, who take two major trips a year, got in a day of diving before the leading edge of the storm began to move westward across the Caribbean Sea.

“That’s when it turned into a different kind of trip: a survival trip,” said Levey, sitting Monday in the sun room at his Van Nuys home.

As the enormous storm system packing 350-mph winds bore down on them, Levey said, the group moved from the resort’s outer cabins into three rooms in its main building.

The resort’s resident owner and another investor, the only other people on-site, joined the dive club in the three-room enclave.

“As a group we did not wait to be helped,” Levey said. “We made a conscious decision to help ourselves.”

To survive the storm, Levey said, group members realized that they would have to assess each other’s individual strengths and then use them to benefit the whole group.

When the electricity went out, Levey, 62, a recently retired aerospace engineer from Litton Industries, devised a plan to connect a generator to an electrical pump that drew fresh water from an underground well.

Using Levey’s plan, club members Rusty Royden of North Hollywood and Dave Carlson of Reseda, experienced electrical and construction contractors, hooked up the generator that provided fresh water.

Levey’s wife, Sharron, a registered nurse and a manager for a health maintenance organization, had brought along a first-aid kit. She closed a member’s deep leg wound and treated another who had been stung by a fish. Pharmacist Len Randall of Tarzana provided antibiotics.

Yet another clutch of club members became the group’s construction team, Levey said. They obtained plywood, removed glass panes and boarded up windows in the three rooms.

The Leveys used the ham radio they’d brought along to communicate with the U.S. State Department, which planned to rescue the group if members could not get out before the storm hit.

Howling winds and torrential rains began to pummel the island two days after the group arrived and lasted for another four days, Levey said.

At the height of the storm, Levey said he was “thankful about how secure we felt inside those three rooms. When we stepped outside, we had a true realization of how dangerous it was for people who were not in a secure situation.”

By Saturday, the winds began to die down and the cloud ceiling was high enough to allow a jet to land at the island’s airport, he said.

The flight was originally bound for El Salvador, he said, but the pilot agreed to fly club members to the United States.

Early Sunday morning, the jet touched down in Houston, he said, where the dive club boarded a flight to Los Angeles.

Levey began to grasp the enormity of the storm’s devastation only after he returned home and heard news reports that thousands of Central Americans had perished in the hurricane.

“During the [storm], individuals performed magnificently,” he said. “Only afterward did people begin to break down crying after seeing the news and what could have been.”

Although Levey has had only minimal peripheral vision since he was 8, he said blindness was not a factor during his ordeal.

“Just because you have a visual disability doesn’t mean you can’t face and solve problems,” he said. “The group used my strengths where they made sense and helped me only when I needed it. Everyone was there for each other.”

Still, the harrowing experience has not dampened Levey’s enthusiasm for diving: He plans to go under the sea again during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

“Looking back, it was a terrible dive trip,” he said, “but a wonderful experience.”

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Making Connections

Anyone wishing to participate in the relief effort to aid Honduran and Nicaraguan victims of Hurrican Mitch may drop off donations at any of the 10 Highway Patrol offices in Los Angeles County.

In the Valley area, the CHP has offices at 5825 De Soto Ave., Woodland Hills, 28648 The Old Road, Valencia and 2401 West. Ave. in the Antelope Valley.

Donations will be accepted from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday until Dec. 1.

Needed items include canned goods, blankets, shoes and clothing.

For more information, call Officer Lou Aviles at (818) 240-8200 or any CHP office in the county.