ROANOKE, Va. – Nearly two and a half months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, 10 News is hearing from a retired FBI agent who survived the storm and decided to seek refuge in Southwest Virginia.
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September.
"In one day, it went from being a very beautiful place to being a kind of ugly place," David Olshack said.
Olshack was there to witness it all.
"If Puerto Rico had winters, it would've looked like it because every leaf off of every palm tree had been blown off," Olshack said.
Olshack was one of the lucky ones, with minimal damage to his house, but still had to endure weeks without electricity.
"I slept on a couch in my office for about six weeks," Olshack said.
After helping others recover from the devastation, he decided to retire from the FBI and leave Puerto Rico.
"Just to have some sort of a life. If there was some certainty that they said, ‘Okay in two months, you're going to have your power back and everything will be fine in two months,’ then I could've rode it out for a couple more weeks," Olshack said.
So he booked a one-way ticket to Washington Dulles International Airport.
"I brought everything that I could fit in two suitcases, a backpack and a duffel bag," Olshack said.
That included some clothes, shoes and a guitar that he couldn't leave Puerto Rico without.
"What’s the price of being able to enjoy watching television? Taking a hot shower? Just enjoying a modern civilized life as opposed to living where there's no water and no electricity? So it was a hard decision so far as how much money I was going to spend, but not a hard decision so far as the quality of life," Olshack said.
Olshack plans to return to his home in Puerto Rico in a few weeks to assess the damage and determine his next steps.
"I don't know what the future holds yet and so there's some adventure to that," Olshack said.