Most people could only hunker down and pray during the worst of Hurricane Gonzalo.

The Island was battered by sustained winds of 110 miles per hour late Friday evening into Saturday morning.

The Royal Gazette took to the streets to find out what the scariest moment was for most people. Many told us it was after the eye wall passed and the winds came up again from the opposite direction — with a vengeance.

Waynette Brangman said the scariest moment for her and her family was when what felt like a tornado touched down in their yard on Studio Lane, Hamilton Parish.

“On the back end of the eye there was a twister that touched down,” she said. “It felt like my front door was going to be sucked off the house. At one point I was holding it and the window on it was curving and I was praying the glass would not break. The next day when things calmed down I went outside. It missed my house but touched both of my neighbours [homes] on each side of me, clearing their roofs and the roof [of Bethel AME Church]. It did catch my shed which was also on that same side, but missed the car. It’s an eerie feeling to stand across and look how my house in the middle was unharmed, yet to my left and right I see destruction. I can only give God thanks.”

Dudley Hill, Paget resident Lexy Correia was one of the 31,200 Belco customers without power following the storm.

“Fay took out our electricity and Gonzalo took the lines from the house and into the yard and road,” she said. “The scariest thing was after the eye of the storm. We thought it would be more of the same and I was so exhausted and went to bed and then it got worse and the room was shaking and you could hear loud bangs and noises and things flying past the window. I think the not knowing what was going on was the scariest part.”

Ngadi Kamara of Crawl Hill, Hamilton Parish said she awoke suddenly to a loud bang in the middle of the hurricane.

“I had started to doze off,” she said. “Then I heard this banging and howling winds outside. Our large play set was toppled over.”

Alberta Tucker-Dyer said she dealt with the fear by playing iPod app Candy Crush until her “eyes couldn’t stay open anymore”.

“Each time when I looked over and thought that the windows were going to blow in, I was reminded that God is my refuge and my strength, and a very present help in times of trouble,” she said. “That helped calm me.”

On Saturday morning Mrs Tucker-Dyer realised just how blessed she and her family were, when they saw how close they’d come to having a tree crash through their roof.

“A 70-year-old cedar tree in our backyard snapped at the root and fell in such a way that it was cradled in the branches of one of the other trees,” she said. “Had that tree fallen to the left, it would have crashed into our neighbour’s house. Had it fallen to the right, it would have crashed into our daughter’s bedroom.”

She said realising how close they’d come to tragedy was her scariest moment.