As he landed Bermuda's Deputy Governor Mark Capes was handed a bottle of water by the aircraft cabin crew with the words 'you might need this'.

Mr. Capes had just landed in the Turks and Caicos to help Governor Gordon Wetherall as category four Hurricane Ike bore down on the islands.

Within a few days he would be in the middle of the huge storm – helping to co-ordinate emergency measures and helping to rescue terrified children from a house where winds were about to rip off the roof.

Now safely back in Bermuda, Mr. Capes believes the Bermuda Regiment will play a vital role in helping the islands recover.

"On the morning of Thursday September 4, I received a request from the Foreign Office in London to go immediately to the Turks and Caicos Islands to assist the Governor's Office there.

"By then it was clear that Hurricane Ike was going to pass through the islands that weekend.

"I was asked to go because I spent three years in TCI as Deputy Chief Secretary and know the islands well.

"I arrived on Friday September 5 on the last commercial flight to TCI before the airport closed.

"My American Airlines flight had just five passengers aboard, although it would leave full that evening with people keen to get away before the storm arrived.

"As I disembarked the cabin crew wished me luck and gave me a large bottle of water saying that I might need it.

"I went straight to work with Gordon Wetherall, the recently appointed new Governor of TCI.

"We held meetings with Premier Michael Misick and with officials in the Emergency Operations Centre. We did as much as we could to help prepare for the storm heading ever closer to TCI.

"The following evening, Saturday, the weather began to deteriorate rapidly. Before it got too bad I accompanied the Governor to a few of the hurricane shelters around the island to see how they were functioning and to chat to some of those taking shelter there.

"We were encouraged to find that shelters were already filling up which indicated that people were heeding the public warnings over the radio that Ike was a really dangerous storm.

"By 3 a.m. Sunday morning it was as though we were in a different world, such was the strength of the storm."

"Shortly after 3 a.m. I and a few colleagues had to go out into the storm to help bring about 20 people, including very frightened young children, from a nearby building where the roof was beginning to lift and rain was gushing through large cracks that were developing.

"It was during this dramatic episode that my invaluable Blackberry, stuffed in my pocket, received what later proved to be a fatal soaking.

"We were on Providenciales where the highest recorded wind gust was just over 140 mph."There was flooding, some roofs were badly damaged and the power went down in some parts, but overall the damage was not as bad as it might have been, probably because the buildings on Providenciales are mostly quite new and of sound construction.

"But the eye passed close to or directly over the smaller islands of Grand Turk and South Caicos. We feared for Grand Turk where the buildings are generally much older and quite a few of them made mainly of wood.

"Early on Monday September 8, the day after Ike hit us, I flew with the Governor and two colleagues to Grand Turk in a Royal Navy Lynx helicopter sent from HMS Iron Duke which had raced to TCI to offer assistance.

"It was quite a sight. All over the island telegraph poles carrying power, cable and telephone lines were snapped like matchsticks.

"Mature palm trees, which normally bend with strong winds, were snapped in two. Most buildings had suffered extensive damage and the salinas (salt ponds) had flooded causing much damage to nearby buildings. Cars were strewn about, many with smashed windows.

\"But it was a great relief to learn that despite the devastation there were no casualties, a tribute to the local disaster preparedness committee.

"The Bermuda Regiment troops now in Grand Turk will have more than enough to keep them busy and it will be some time before the island will be back to normal.

"But the Regiment will bring much relief and comfort to the people of Grand Turk as they struggle to reconstruct their island and their lives."