While Jamaicans battened down the hatches for the arrival of Hurricane Dean, European tourists taking shelter in a concrete conference centre were able to track its progress on their laptops as it spiralled towards the island.

Richard Susskind, a lawyer and IT expert who is also a Times columnist, told today how he and dozens of others used the wireless access at the Half Moon resort near Montego Bay to read all about Dean on the American website Hurricane.com.

"It was striking how everyone was wondering around sounding very authoritative," he told Times Online. "But this is quite a prosperous place and people were just accessing the web on their laptops."

Montego Bay is on Jamaica's north coast and therefore escaped the worst of the season's first hurricane, which blasted past the south of the island, sending winds of up to 150mph slamming into Kingston, the capital. But it still brought down trees and covered roads in debris.

Mr Susskind arrived in Montego Bay on Friday with his wife, two teenaged sons and 12-year-old daughter. The first inkling they had of an impending storm was when they read about it in Jamaican newspapers on the airplane over – although it was not yet clear which way it was headed.

Yesterday morning, the resort was evacuated and its 220 remaining guests – quite a few American tourists had already flown home – were transferred to the conference centre inland. The storm began to whip up at around 6pm, by which time wireless internet access had been lost, and hit its peak some three hours later.

Speaking at around 5am local time, Mr Susskind said: "I think the feeling around here appears to be more of relief than anything else. There were lots of trees falling down but it's completely still now, eerily so in fact.

"Dawn is beginning to break and although the roads are completely covered in debris from the trees, there is no sign of any radical damage."

He added: "In my room, there are about a hundred sun lounger mattresses laid out head-to-toe. Everyone's been amazingly well behaved. They've even had a no-alcohol rule, which made me smile.

"There's going to be some kind of advance party, police and military, to look at the state of the resort and then I think they will make an announcement after breakfast.

"What I've been most impressed by is the Jamaican people looking after us. They've obviously got families of their own living nearby but they've managed to look after us really well - not quite as laid back as normal, perhaps, but incredibly supportive.

"It's been a curious experience for us all, a bit of an adventure. And weatherwise, things can only get better."

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