Following Hurricane Dean

Aug. 24, 2007, 2:22 PM UTC

By allDAY

(From TODAY producer Jackie Olensky)

Production manager Erin Reynolds and I flew down to meet Al Roker in Miami on August 19. Al had been flying with the Hurricane Hunters in St. Croix. We did the show from the hurricane center Monday morning.

Victor Ruiz / Reuters

Cancun's beaches, shown Wednesday, lost sand due to storm

swells, but the city sustained little damage from Hurricane Dean.

After we were through, we were were trying to figure out whether Dean was headed to Belize or Chetumal, Mexico - because wherever Dean was going we would follow.

Chetumal was the predicted spot for the eye to pass over so we rushed to get some supplies and headed to the airport.

Al, Erin and I flew from Miami to Cancun. Al and I had covered four hurricanes before but never on foreign territory. When we landed in Cancun, we drove five hours to Chetumal. They were evacuating so we had to go through two police checkpoints and none of us spoke Spanish, so we called Danny Noa on the foreign desk and put him on the phone with the police. Thankfully, he talked us through. The federales said we were entering at our risk...good times!When we got to Chetumal we met up with some other NBC folks. We were being put up at a Holiday Inn in town since it offered more protection then our original hotel which looked like it was barely standing pre-hurricane.

We ate dinner and went to sleep. At about 2 a.m., Erin and I (we were sharing a room since there weren't enough rooms for everyone) woke up from the whirling sounds of the wind and rain -- and the pressure of the eye passing over made our ears clogged. The windows were rattling so fiercely, I said to her that we should leave since I was afraid they would blow in.

We didnt leave right away. At 3 a.m., Al knocked on our door. He was fully dressed and asked us if we wanted to -- I believe his words were -- "Go check out the storm." To which we replied, "Uh, NO!"

He retreated back to his room and then a few minutes later we heard an explosion. We ran into the hall in our pajamas...his window had blown in. The three of us sat in the hallway for three hours to stay away from windows.

We had to go out when the eye was still passing over to do the show. The area around the hotel was devastated. We actually had to climb over what looked like the biggest tree we had ever seen to get to the live shot area.

We then stood out in the pouring rain for four hours to do the show. Although we had hurricane attire, we were soaked through.

When we were done with the Today Show, Al and I went out with Jeff and Bo (our camera crew) to shoot two stories, one for Nightly News and one for the next days Today Show.

We talked to people about how they fared during and after the storm and filmed the aftermath damage around Chetumal.

After a 19-hour day it was time to hit the sack...the only problem was the hotel had no power, so no air-conditioning...it was unbearably hot!

Wednesday, we did the show and then hit the road for a five-hour drive to Cancun. Because there were no available flights home we spent the night in Cancun.