A BURNLEY couple were left ‘terrified’ after Hurricane Ike ripped through their luxury holiday resort.

Luke Brydges, 20, and girlfriend Georgina Morris, 24, were forced to spend nine hours in tropical heat in a cramped restaurant with 1,000 other guests, as the hurricane wreaked havoc on the Cuban resort of Cayo Coco.

And the couple were left with rationed food and water for the last four days of their two-week break after the causeway connec-ting to the mainland was destroyed, leaving only a few staff to deal with the crisis.

Earlier this month Ike became a Category Four hurricane, with peak winds of 145 mph. It has been blamed for 108 deaths so far, primarily in Haiti.

Luke, a shop assistant, said they were both ‘excited’ when they heard the tropical storm was heading towards the island but then became ‘really scared’ when its force became apparent.

He said: “We were woken up at 5.30am by someone banging on our door and telling us to get out of the room quickly. There was lots of confusion because some people were told to bring their belongings and some weren’t – everyone was panicking.

“We were crammed inside three restaurant halls with 1,000 people, the windows were boarded-up and everyone was with no air conditioning.

“We had to stay in there for nine-and-a-half-hours but when we nipped outside to see the force of the hurri-cane it was blowing the tops off palm trees and ripping signs out of the ground.

“When we were eventually sent back to the hotel, we weren’t allowed to open windows and it was still warm and really humid. We were very scared.”

Hurricane Ike descended on the island on September 8 and led to three large hotels having to be evacuated. But only a tenth of staff were present as most were not able to get across from the mainland.

Former Habergham pupil Luke, of Kiddrow Avenue, paid tribute to the hotel workers. He said: “Some of them told us their homes had been destroyed but they were still smiling.”

The couple made it back to Burnley last Friday