This was posted on Rainbow Reef Dive Center's Facebook page:
Rainbow Reef Dive Center added 7 new photos.
13 hrs ·
To all of our friends, families and customers:
First we would like to say that our hearts and thoughts go out to everyone between Marathon and Key West as they basically took a direct hit, so we hope they can recover and rebuild soon.
As for us, we had some serious wind and rain, and even though we were 80 miles from the eye of the storm, we still had winds over 100mph lash us pretty good for 18 hours. We are happy to say that all of the boats made it, all of the dive center buildings made it and we only sustained minor damage to our dock and changing rooms, basically a few bumps and bruises. The pictures make it look a little bad with all the tree limbs down, but overall we couldn't have asked to come out of this much better than we did. Most of us in the upper keys dodged a bullet but we do have at least one crew member who lost their house and a few with damage they will need to deal with.
The keys are closed until Tuesday morning at 7:00am, at which time they will open up to allow residents in that live in Key Largo and Islamorada. We still have no electricity, no water, no fuel, and spotty cell service, so we hope that changes soon. We will get the phones up and running and the email answered as soon as we can, and with any luck we can have the dive center put back together by the end of the week and get trips out this weekend.
So, we have some work to do, but we will be ready to take you out diving again as soon as we possibly can. We hope you will join us.