Medical students urge Ottawa to help Canadians stranded in St. Maarten
Some Canadian medical students who managed to escape St. Maarten before hurricane Irma pummelled the Caribbean island are urging the federal government to help bring home their fellow students who weren’t so lucky.
Dulani Samarappuli, of Calgary, who just finished her first year at the American University of the Caribbean School, said she was one of five Canadians from the school who managed to board a Sunwing flight to Canada on Tuesday morning before the devastating storm hit.
“My plan was to pack up everything in the house, take shelter on campus and ride it out,” the 26-year-old said. “But the night they said Irma would be a Category 5, I started to get more nervous and so did other students.”
Samarappuli said she and four other students decided at the last minute to go to the airport to see if they could catch a flight to Toronto.