Wedding during hurricane Catarina is remembered by husband 20 years later: ‘Everything flew away’ | Santa Catarina

Check out images from Charles and Cleimar’s wedding, held during Hurricane Catarina

20 years ago, Charles Sousa and his then fiancee Cleimar got married. The ceremony is not only remembered by them and their guests because of the celebration of their union. One element that the couple did not plan for directly affected their marriage: the passage of Hurricane Catarina.

“Decoration, gifts, glasses, glasses flew. Everything flew”, Charles summarized.

The hurricane passed through the south of Santa Catarina between March 27 and 28, 2004, leaving a trail of destruction. There were 11 deaths and more than 30 thousand people left homeless and homeless. The hurricane caused strong winds and a lot of rain.

It was late afternoon on March 27, 2004, a Saturday. He and his wife, Cleimar, got married in the ballroom of the Maracajá Ecological Park, in the south of Santa Catarina.

The ceremony brought together family and friends from Santa Catarina, Paraná and even Rio Grande do Sul. At least, those who managed to arrive, as many gave up after warnings of strong winds in the city.

“We weren’t too worried, we were more nervous about getting married. Everything was already paid for, food, decoration, musician… There was no way to cancel,” said Charles.

The ceremony and party were in the hall. When the doors opened for the bride to enter, Charles remembers the whistle of the wind and Cleimar’s veil flying behind her. “We couldn’t get the dimensions of it. We could hear the wind and rain, but nothing to worry us about,” he said.

The ceremony and dinner continued normally. Around midnight, just as the DJ was about to start playing the bride and groom’s waltz, the power went out.

At that time, some of the guests had already left. Some people had already taken chairs to the women’s bathroom, which was partially underground, to protect themselves.

The mayor of Maracajá at the time, who was at the wedding, left in the middle of the event along with the Civil Defense. When he returned, he warned the guests and the bride and groom: “stay here”.

At around one in the morning, power briefly returned, followed by another blackout. The party room has two glass doors, with four leaves each. The coming wind hit the back door, where the guests decided to place their beverage freezers to try to hold the structure.

Just after 1am, the wind calmed. According to Civil Defense, it was the moment when the eye of the hurricane passed through the city. The calm, however, was short-lived. It was after this that the worst part of the hurricane began, when winds reached 200 kilometers per hour.

The rain came in through the cracks in the doors and the whistling of the wind made everything even more frightening. At this time, all of the approximately 30 people who were still in the room, including the bride and groom, went to the women’s bathroom.

This place, which was underground, with a window looking out, became the group’s shelter. From this window, you could see the trees almost bending from the gusts.

“We took the chairs and placed them in the bathroom in two rows, facing each other. It was a very long space, and at the end we could see the rain and wind outside”, recalled Charles.

Outside, the wind turned and began to hit the front door of the room with greater force. From the bathroom, Charles remembers hearing glass shatter in the wind. One of the ecological tiles used to cover the structure came off.

“Decoration, gifts, glasses, glasses flew. Everything flew. We only left the bathroom in the morning. The wife left at around 8am, but I stayed there until around 11am to see the damage. From there, we went home. There was no longer any mood for a honeymoon”, he reported.

From family and friends, no one was injured. Charles and Cleimar’s house, in Criciúma, a city just over 20 kilometers from Maracajá, lost just one tile, the iron gate came off the track and the water valve was broken.

“The wind wasn’t that strong there. But we saw, on the way, the roofed houses, fallen trees”, said Charles.

In the end, the wedding photos didn’t turn out as they planned. In the park where the ceremony took place, there was a suspension bridge that would be the setting for the rehearsal. But it flew and was destroyed.

“We are sad, it was a day that we would have liked to have celebrated with family and friends. We wanted to have celebrated in the morning. We wanted an unforgettable wedding, and at this point, it was”, declared Charles.

To celebrate 20 years of marriage, they plan a special celebration, and on the 25th, they want to celebrate the Silver Wedding with friends and relatives who were there on March 27, 2004 to throw the much-desired party.

The years of union bore fruit: Isabela, 15 years old, and little Alice, who turned 6 at the beginning of March.

More than 30 thousand people were homeless and displaced in Santa Catarina because of the hurricane. In total, 14 municipalities declared a public calamity and another seven declared an emergency.

The winds reached 180 kilometers per hour, which places Catarina in category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures the intensity of these phenomena. It goes up to category 5.

The losses totaled approximately R$1 billion. The force of the wind uprooted 115 trees.