Hurricane victims on the devastated Caribbean island of St Maarten are running short of food, with destroyed and looted supermarkets infested with maggots.
MailOnline visited the popular Le Grand Marche supermarket at Cole Bay, the biggest on the island, and found post-apocalyptic scenes.
Rancid meat lay in the aisles, crawling with maggots. Fetid pools of stagnant water and rotting food in the 40 degree heat gave off a stomach-churning stench.
The Island of St Maarten in the Caribbean has been left devastated by Hurricane Irma. Houses were destroyed in the storm (pictured), leaving debris strewn about the island
The island was one of the worst affected by Hurricane Irma. The clean up operation is under way with JCBs (pictured) deployed to help
MailOnline visited the popular Le Grand Marche supermarket at Cole Bay, the biggest on the island, and found post-apocalyptic scenes. Maggots were crawling on rotten meat on the shelves (pictured)
Supermarket shelves have been left empty as lawlessness gripped the island in the days after the storm
Inside the supermarket (pictured), fetid pools of stagnant water and rotting food in the 40 degree heat gave off a stomach-churning stench
Maikel Marcus (pictured), 55, is now sleeping in a life raft he found after the hurricane tore off his roof
Much of the supplies had been looted as lawlessness gripped the island in the days after the storm. What was left had quickly gone off and began to rot.
Desperate residents are forced to rely on aid handouts, but with supply lines down and infrastructure shattered, very little is getting through.
‘We don’t have enough supplies, and what supplies we do have are hard to distribute throughout the island because of the destruction,’ Lieutenant Colonel Harro de Vries, commander of the Dutch forces on the island, told MailOnline.
‘We are having to hand out military supplies of our own.’
We sent up a drone to capture footage revealing the scale of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Irma after St Maarten was destroyed by 225mph winds.
The force of the Category 4 hurricane lifted boats out of the water, leaving them lying at the side of roads on the island
Cars left unprotected during the storm were heavily damaged while many homes were reduced to wooden splinters after the 225mph winds destroyed them
Workers in tractors have begun trying to clear the roads (pictured). Household items such as mattresses can be seen lying in the streets after houses were destroyed
Starving locals have been queuing up for food as aid workers desperately try to provide vital supplies to the island (pictured)
A hotel room on the island sits in ruins after the hurricane ripped the roof off the building. Debris lies strewn around the room
Two beers stand empty on a supermarket shelf. Mass looting which took place as law and order broke down in the wake of the storm has seen shops left gutted
Thousands of homes across the island have been flattened, while luxury yachts moored in marinas have been sunk or driven on shore by the hurricane-force winds.
Locals have been forced to queue for basic aid and even water as the island’s infrastructure has been utterly destroyed by the hurricane.
Others have been forced to arm themselves to protect their property as widespread looting has been reported.
MailOnline was among the first to reach the stricken island, travelling 100miles from Antigua by speedboat because the airport was destroyed.
Hotels on the island have had their roofs ripped off by the devastating winds
Trees had all foliage torn away, leaving them bare
Hurricane Irma damaged almost every building on the island, ripping off roofs and blowing out windows
Boat owners were unable to find a safe place to store their vessels to ride out the storm before Irma’s dramatic arrival
The island’s road network has become clogged by locals seeking assistance from remote areas causing gridlock
Perter Kytho Marcus (left), 21, Maureen de la Fuente (centre), 52 and Maikel Marcus, (right) 55, on the mattress which saved their lives in their family home when windows were ripped clean out and the roof torn off during Hurricane Irma
Chris Hazel, 34, a sales assistant, stands alongside an Audi peppered with damed caused by flying debris
Our drone exposed the scale of the carnage, with top-of-the-range pleasure boats flung onto dry land or piled on top of each other by the wind.
Entire houses had been flattened. Thousands of people could be seen stuck in traffic jams as they desperately tried to secure for basic necessities before the three o’clock curfew.
We found half-empty supermarkets filled with stinking pools of fetid water, the broken fridges holding meat crawling with maggots. Families were living on cornflakes and meagre aid handouts from the Dutch military.
Looting and lawlessness has wreaked havoc on the island, with gun-toting gangs marauding through the smashed streets and robbing people of what little they have left.
The island, which is 1,200 miles south east of Miami, Florida is split between the French section on the north, which is called St Martin and the Dutch administered area on the south, named St Maarten.
St Maarten is famous for its Princess Juliana International Airport because arriving aircraft pass at low level above the Maho beach. Thrillseekers often stand behind the runaway and get blasted by the jet wash of aircraft preparing to take off.
MailOnline’s Jake Wallis Simons, pictured, chartered a speedboat to St Maarten from Antigua and travelled more than 100 miles to inspect the devastation on the island first hand and bring exclusive drone footage of the carnage wrought by Irma
The Dutch and French armies have deployed soldiers onto the streets in a desperate attempt to maintain order and enforce the curfew. On Thursday, police promised ‘quick and swift punishment’ for looters, arresting eight people for remaining on the streets after 3pm and other offences, including the possession of drugs.
Motorists are forced to queue for more than six hours at petrol stations, making the theft of petrol has become a scourge of ordinary people trying to rebuild their lives.
One Dutch marine, who gave his name as John Cheese, 24, slammed the Red Cross, saying that soldiers were being forced to ‘play policeman, social worker, soldier, nurse and doctor’ because the NGO was not responding adequately to the crisis.
‘They’re not doing sh**,’ he told MailOnline. ‘We are having to give people our own rations and water because the Red Cross is not providing supplies. We are using our own surgical gloves and equipment.
‘How are we supposed to keep order on the island when we are having to do aid work to cover for the Red Cross?’
Eighty-two elderly and vulnerable people remained in the care of the Dutch army while looters and thieves run amok elsewhere on the island in areas like Middle Region, he said.
Mechanic Mr Marcus, 55, was camping out in the wreckage of his house to protect it from looters, armed with a gun.
A young girl played amid the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma. The full scale of destruction can be seen in the background
A man looks ruefully over the devastated remains of the island following Hurricane Irma
Desperate residents have been forced to rely on aid handouts, but with supply lines down and infrastructure shattered, very little is getting through
A Dutch soldier armed with an automatic weapon stands guard alongside a food aid truck as hungry locals line up for food aid
Looting and lawlessness has wreaked havoc on the island, with gun-toting gangs marauding through the smashed streets and robbing people of what little they have left
Hurricane Irma lashed St Maarten with winds in excess of 225 miles per hour causing massive destruction
Mail Online were the first journalists to arrive on the island. They found a scene of an almost apocalyptic scale, with huge boats left grounded after being tossed easily aside by the hurricane winds
Around the many marinas on the island, millions of pounds worth of private yachts have been damaged or destroyed
Cars were picked up by the winds which reached 225 miles per hour as Hurricane Irma lashed the Caribbean island
Supermarkets which suffered extreme damage were later looted by people searching for food before aid arrived
Maureen de la Fuente, 52, left, Maikel Marcus, 55, centre and Peter Kytho Marcus, right, stand in the front room of their home in St Maarten which has lost its roof after being hit by Hurricane Irma and then Hurricane Jose
‘After the storm, a box came floating on the water to me,’ he told MailOnline. ‘God sent it to me. Inside was some flares, a fishing kit and a lifeboat tent. Now that has become my home-inside-a-home.
‘Our roof was torn off so everything gets soaked when it rains. I spend the night in this tent with my two friends: my gun and my radio.’
He had already used the weapon to deter looters, he said. ‘In the middle of the night, I heard the gate moving and saw a man coming up the stairs,’ he said. ‘I got my gun and as soon as he saw the nickel and chrome, he did a circle and ran off. He vanished so quickly I thought he had flown away.’
Mr Marcus and his wife, Maureen de la Friente, 52, had their lives saved by a mattress when the hurricane hit last Tuesday night. The roof of their house was ripped off and everything inside their home began to fly about in the 225mph winds.
‘We grabbed our two chihuahuas and our son and lay on the floor under the mattress,’ Mr Marcus told MailOnline. ‘The dogs were panting and trembling with fear. We were terrified.
‘When the roof went, the hurricane came inside the house. Everything started flying. Chunks of brick and concrete were thudding on the mattress, which saved our lives for sure. The hurricane door, which is supposed to protect us, shot off and ended up inside the stove.’
Their son, Kytho Marcus, 21, said that the family were forced to shower at a burst pipe down the road, along with the rest of the local community.
‘We’ve had our own bathroom for our entire lives and now we’re forced to have a shower with an audience of 30 people,’ he said.
Youngsters are trying to get back to some normality on the island and were spotted playing football on a pitch surrounded by goals bent and broken by the hurricane
The Dutch military are on the streets. Looting and lawlessness has wreaked havoc on the island, with gun-toting gangs marauding through the smashed streets and robbing people of what little they have left
The island, which is 1,200 miles south east of Miami, Florida is split between the French section on the north, which is called St Martin and the Dutch administered area on the south, named St Maarten
Aid supplies have been arriving on the island a week after the hurricane destroyed thousands of homes
Cars trying to move through the rubble on the streets were left at a standstill
Maureen de la Fuente (pictured), 52, has already started to clean up her house.
The long clean up operation is under way. One worker was seen sweeping up the trees that had been blown through the streets by Hurricane Irma
Relatives of the family, who live in Holland, are constantly asking them to join the thousands of other residents fleeing the disaster zone to set up a new life in a safer country.
‘My family wants us to go back to Holland or Surinam,’ Mrs de la Friente said. ‘But we refuse to go. We are not like that. We are not begging. We would prefer to die from hunger than beg.’
Down the road from their wrecked house, the Audi showroom was taking an urgent inventory to establish how many vehicles had been stolen or damaged during the hurricane.
Outside was a brand new, black Audi TT which had been dented and scratched by the storm. Its windscreen had also been smashed.
‘It feels like my babies have been damaged,’ said Dylan Smith, 37, the brand and logistics manager at the showroom.
‘Some people care more about cars than about humans, more even than their family. This car is worth $65,000 and it has sustained $6,000 worth of damage.’
He added: ‘It’s not fun and games, that’s for sure. But we are all helping each other, and we will get through this.’
As lawlessness gripped the island, families were forced to arm themselves of packs of looters roamed the area looking for fresh targets
A speed boat was dispatched to St Maarten to take people off the island
Luxury boats usually docked in the marina were left grounded around the island after being thrown about by Hurricane Irma
One of the many boats on the island that was destroyed by Hurricane Irma. This one lies half submerged in the sea