Between tears and laughter Ashley Engebretsen, formerly of Kalispell, recounted feats of survival amid chaos following the devastation of Hurricane Odile and the looting and violence that ensued in the days following.

The 25-year-old, who has lived and worked at a resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for the past year and a half, finally made it back to her hometown and to the open arms of her family Friday at Glacier Park International Airport with just a small backpack of belongings.

During the days following the hurricane, Engebretsen proved her mettle, resilience, resourcefulness and leadership.

When the Category 3 hurricane hit Sept. 14, Engebretsen was visiting a friend’s house with her boyfriend. The group of friends didn’t seem too concerned about the warnings.

“No one was ready. No one was prepared because Cabo gets hurricanes all the time,” Engebretsen said. “It rains; it floods a little bit; it dries up the next couple of days.”

Not this time.

Starting around midnight, “it was about five to six hours of straight horrific wind,” Engebretsen said. “The windows were warping in and out like a subwoofer. Our ears hurt from the pressure. The wood front door, water was flying through it [at the edges]. We had chairs bracing the door shut so it wouldn’t blow open.”

When Engebretsen drove through town to her apartment the next day (Monday) she saw the extent of the damage — rooftops ripped off of buildings, windows blown out and overturned trailers.

After navigating through muddied roads, debris and downed power lines and trees, she and her boyfriend decided it would be safer to park and walk the last two blocks home. That was when they saw looting going on at convenience stores.

“The storm was the least of her issues,” said Engebretsen’s mother Stacia Stevens of Kalispell.

Engebretsen found her apartment was in relatively good shape. The windows had been shattered, but her living room was the only room damaged by rain. Her bedroom and bathroom remained dry. The building, which was made of concrete, was still standing.

“The mattress from people above me was on my balcony. These people had a door frame blow off, and the fan in the room... the wind made it spin and it drilled a hole in the ceiling. The pool was black with groundwater,” Engebretsen said, noting that they would end up using the stagnant water to flush toilets.

The neighbors who remained, 11 people, gathered together to figure out a plan. They were without power and running water.

“We realized we didn’t prepare for this. Nobody did. We needed water and supplies,” Engebretsen said.

Some of the group went to a nearby convenience store and joined a horde of hundreds desperate for water, food and supplies taking what they needed for the people in their building to survive over a couple of days. With 100-degree days and high humidity, perishable food didn’t last.

“We took water. I actually found a phone car charger. That’s the only reason why we had any [outside] contact. Everyone in the building used my phone,” Engebretsen said.

They soon went to work reinforcing a concrete security wall that had been damaged by the hurricane. In hopes to deter looters, they scattered broken glass on top. On a radio they had heard warnings about a gang of 20 to 30 people with weapons and guns who were raiding people’s houses.

“We had already heard gunshots on our street,” Engebretsen said. “We didn’t know how long it would be until people were at our front door.”

Engebretsen didn’t get much sleep. The men in the group found machetes, knives — whatever weapons they could protect themselves with — and took shifts patrolling the building. About six people slept in Engebretsen’s apartment to have safety in numbers.

Tuesday, Engebretsen said the looting in downtown became worse at big box stores, jewelry stores and banks.

“They were left with nothing on their shelves. Pretty much every single store in town was raided Tuesday,” Engebretsen said.

Water became a precious commodity.

“There is no water source in Cabo. The resorts are off of desalination plants from the ocean and the rest of the people live off the water being brought in,” she said,

Money was also scarce since she couldn’t access her bank account, yet Engebretsen pitched in $300 for water.

“We bought $600 worth of water that lasted us roughly four days,” she said. “Not very much water for $600. I would say it was about $100 for a gallon or one big jug.”

The military offered some crowd control at Walmart, Engebretsen said.

“They were only letting two people in, two people out, and they were only allowed to take a bag of groceries at a time,” she said. “There were thousands of people in line. It worked for the most part, but I guess after the food and the water was gone, they just started raiding everything — TV’s, washers, dryers, even people were stealing a bathtub I saw on somebody’s roof. We just took what we needed — water and snack foods.”

By Wednesday, the group, down to about eight people, (a few had left to live with other people) decided it wasn’t safe to stay. They were tired, hungry and dirty. Engebretsen had injured her foot after stepping on a metal rod that went through her shoe and into her skin while trying to check on a friend living in a nearby neighborhood.

 It was time to evacuate.

“Wednesday was the day we said, ‘OK we will not be safe here one more night and we all agreed on it. There was no way the men could protect our house one more night. We knew it was going to get raided. We saw the people that were coming. They came with like five dudes walking around our property during the day with weapons asking questions about how many people lived there. We knew that was the night we have to get out of here,” she said.

Engebretsen called her mom on Wednesday for five minutes asking her to call the U.S. Embassy with a list of names to be evacuated. Those efforts were futile.

“Once we got to the airport it didn’t matter if you were on a list, anybody and everybody that was there got on a flight,” Engebretsen said.

Just getting to the airport was a challenge in itself. Engebretsen’s SUV was the only way to get out and the tank was on fumes. She resorted to siphoning gas from a car that wasn’t going anywhere because of flat tires and from one of the group members’ cars.

“I’m the only person that knew how to siphon gas. I’ve learned that from living in Alaska with my grandfather. My grandfather’s a mechanic,” Engebretsen laughed, noting that her skills range from changing car belts and alternators to hanging dry wall and fixing plumbing and electricity.

“If you’re in trouble, you want Ashley on your team,” Stevens said about her daughter.

With about a gallon and a half of siphoned gas, they drove across town to stay the night at a friend’s and figure out how to get more gas. Everyone carried only one bag of necessities.

“We left like at 3 p.m. We had to get there before dark. Dark is chaos,” she said.

The men of the group sat conspicuously in front of the windows holding weapons so that people wouldn’t rob them. When they arrived, they planned to take Engebretsen’s boyfriend’s truck to the airport only to discover all the gas had been siphoned. Luckily, another friend showed up in a truck full of gas, but with a flat tire.

Engebretsen knew how to change tires, but ran into more trouble when the spare, old and mounted on a rusty wheel, blew out. By this time it was dark. Anxiously she searched vehicles for a tire that would fit under the constant threat of violent looters.

“That night I slept probably 15 minutes and I had a hole in my foot, but we were on such an adrenaline high, a state of fear, everyone was on edge 24/7. You couldn’t relax. The most I slept [straight through] was two hours.”

Thursday morning she woke everyone up to leave at 3:30 a.m. and beat the heat and lines at the airport.

“I cut up some summer sausage and crackers and handed that out for everyone to eat and we left,” Engebretsen said.

Finally at the airport, the group thought they were in line behind 20 people only to be shuffled behind roughly 400 people, yet they still beat busloads of thousands coming in from resorts by about an hour.

“They started separating U.S. citizens and any other citizenship,” Engebretsen said.

This was when the group of eight was split in half. It was also the gut-wrenching moment she had to say goodbye to her boyfriend.

“I had to go the other way,” Engebretsen said, breaking out in tears. “These eight people we survived with — the relationships I formed with them are stronger than the people I’ve know my whole life.”

Once on the plane Engebretsen’s survival mode was switched off and she was flooded with emotion and relief.

 “The minute they gave us a bagel sandwich on the plane — it was just so good. It was just a dry bagel with ham and cheese but it was so good,” Engebretsen said, laughing through choked sobs.

“I went to the bathroom in the airplane, and I am just covered in dirt. And I was crying because I got to wash my hands with warm water in the little bathroom and it stinked,” she said. “I washed my face and I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in like five days and I was just like, ‘whoa.’”

The flight landed in Dallas, Texas, and she was checked into an Embassy Suites for the night for free. The first thing the group of four did was go out to eat burgers and afterward hit the hot tub.

“Oh my gosh, it was the best food ever. We couldn’t even eat that much — our tummies had all shrunk,” Engebretsen said.

The ordeal has left Engebretsen amazed at how everything can change in one day. It has also given her an appreciation for the basic necessities of running water and electricity.

And she plans to return to Cabo San Lucas when things recover.

“I love it there. My friends are there. My life is there,” Engebretsen said. “It’s going to be awhile before I can go back. I don’t know when it will get better, but when it does, I will go back.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.