These are hurricane-related snippets I found in my journals. === September 1989 On September 17th, 1989, Hurricane Hugo hit. I could not sleep, windows broke, and people were scared. No water, phones, electricity, houses, and trees. Nothing will be back together for months! --- August 1990 I remember on September 18th sitting on my leaning treehouse, looking into the deep, dark, flooding pool, with its railing, blinds, and shutters hidden at the bottom. Looking at the fallen bare trees, the phone poles, the kitchen counter, the living room, my flooded bedroom, and the neighbor's roof, thinking life will never be the same again. The seventy-two powerless days, five telephone-less months, and a cable-less year. The contractor, moving out temporarily. Now the house looks difference, as a result of Hurricane Hugo, and I know it and I will never be the same again. --- September 3, 1995 It's no longer A-gust, but we think we're going to get one, a gust that is. Well, really it's more like a 140 sustained eyewall (again!) which we're supposed to get on the 5th-6th. Luis. I've bagged some of my things, taken most of the files off the desktop computer for laptop use, put plastic over one bookcase. Need to do the rest of my room, office, and statues tomorrow. Still not positive that the storm is going to hit us. I hate the weather channel. So many boats in the salt pond. It has been really hot. Trying to get everything put away. --- January 23, 1996 It's finally a new year, and since I haven't written in a long time, I figured I should start again.So, here's a quick summary and then I'll start writing about 1996. September -- Marilyn. I could go on for hours, but why bother? We got electricity December 8th. End of subject. --- June 5, 1996 If the storm itself wasn't bad enough, there was the realization that once the hurricane left, the nightmare would not be over. Gradually, the island has regained a sense of normalcy, but we are still reminded of the hurricane and must still face its aftermath every day. Some of us were more fortunate than others during the storm, but we have survived Marilyn, we have survived half a year after its trauma, and we will continue to be strong. We all carry our own experiences of the night of September 15th, and we all carry the experiences of the initial days, weeks, and months of our recovery. Long lines, putting up roofs or whole houses, no electricity, no phones, ice, and still too much homework are some of the things we will remember, or try to forget. Let's face it, Marilyn and the aftermath were (and still are) no picnic. It is not something that I would want to do again. These are experiences that we may not want to remember, but they are a part of our lives. Hurricane Marilyn has affected so much. But there will be other things we will remember as well: those funny little stories that we can look back on and even laugh a bit at some time in the future (as in those little jars of Tabasco sauce in the MREs and other things that happened from day to day, things that no one else would understand if they hadn't survived such a disaster). We can also look back and remember the little bit of good that did come out of the storm. Although there was some bad behavior, many people pitched in to help family, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Red Cross, FEMA, SBA, and other acronyms were a part of the positive experience (even if it meant waiting on another long line). Hurricane Marilyn was, among other things, an experience that we will not easily forget. Nor will we forget the little bits of good that came out of it. At times like these, we have to be positive, have something to make us smile or laugh and something to make us continue in our struggle for recovery. The recovery is not over yet, and won't be anytime soon. We can't just wake up one day and say, "It's all over; it never happened." There are more signs of normalcy each day. Some changes were very pronounced, like the arrival of electricity (for the most part we enjoyed a light Christmas); still others were just little changes in our everyday lives. Marilyn has caused much tension, anger, and frustration, but nothing that we haven't been able to cope with. We are coping. We are the survivors of Hurricane Marilyn. The last stage in personal recovery is being able to distance yourself from a situation and forget about it for a moment. But we will not forget and we should not forget. Instead we should look back with new insight and see how we've changed and grown, how we've adapted and survived, and how we've learned. --- September 15, 1996 Hurricanes have shaped so much of my life. From Hugo in 1989 to Marilyn in 1995 (and the less major Luis and Bertha), the word "hurricane" has become synonymous with "hell". I know what it is like to spend days tracking a storm and preparing, stocking up on goods and bagging all of one's possessions. I know what it is like to wait for hours huddled under a bed, waiting for the storm to pass and relaxing only briefly during the eye, worrying and clinging desperately to the support of radio announcers. I also know what it is like to live in the aftermath of a storm, in a national disaster area, where houses are reduced to concrete slabs, supermarkets have nothing, and the most important things in life become ice, gas, and a desire to survive, with no electricity or telephones for months. I have learned how inconsequential many things that we take for granted are, and how fortunate I have been. --- October 25, 1996 Most people don't give ice a second thought, but coming from the Virgin Islands where it is always hot, ice is good to have. Surviving two major hurricanes (Hugo in 1989 and Marilyn in 1995) and their aftermaths, each consisting of months without electricity and hence refrigeration, taught me just how essential ice is. I remember after Hurricane Hugo when I was nine, people waiting for hours at the dairy when the first shipment of ice came in several days after the storm. Although things like plywood for roofs were needed to rebuild, it was something as seemingly little as ice that was required for life to begin to regain a sense of normality. About six weeks later we made it off-island -- to Florida to buy things (windows, kitchen cabinets, bedroom furniture), my first stop after getting off the plane was a drink stand in the airport to order "just a glass of ice". I pulled out money to pay for it -- probably five dollars -- and the woman at the counter looked at me strangely. Imagine her surprise that I was willing to pay for ice, a commodity that she took for granted as being overly abundant. --- January 1997 A hurricane is a war that nature has waged on us. During the storm it is awful and there is no refuge from the horrific sounds of the wind and flying objects nor from the general hysteria and paranoia, which is often increased by probably well-meaning radio announcers. The day after a storm, it makes the headlines in some paper like the New York Times, which of course no one gets to see since they can't get communication, food, ice, or water from the outside world, let alone a newspaper. But even worse is the calming of the storm, when the winds subside and the rain is no longer brutal. That is when everyone crawls out from the closet, the bathtub, under the bed, or from beneath the plywood that has fallen on top leaving them paralyzed for hours. That is when everyone has to deal with what has happened. First there is shock, then everything sinks in slowly, like waking from a foggy dream only to realize it wasn't a dream at all. After Hugo I was stunned. I had had this vague naive notion that with strong shutters outside, the inside of the house would be left untouched. Not that I would surface to find ten sliding glass doors missing, all of the furniture rearranged inside and out, a flooded pool filled with odds-and-ends, and blinds and pieces of a puzzle all the way down the hillside. But life goes on since there is no choice. The motto became "today is a little bit better than yesterday," and every day it was. A week later there was ice, slowly roads were cleared, then later came furniture shopping, then after Thanksgiving came electricity and running water, then rebuilding, and phones in February. After a few years the trees and economy were beginning to recover as well. Everyone was recovering, but inside there were scars. These scars would probably have disappeared eventually were in not for another once-in-a-lifetime hurricane. This time we all knew what to expect, and that made it none the easier. Again we prepared by bagging everything. Again, we huddled in a bedroom, and again we emerged from the bedroom early one morning to survey the damage: part of the roof missing, the resulting water damage, and our neighbors' roof in our yard. The scariest thing for me to see was a roof beam that had to have come flying directly over our house. If that had hit the roof over us.... Our first experience had made us too wise and worried for our own good. Again, the same thing: electricity in December, phones in April, and it was harder to go on every day with those inconveniences, the expensive repairs, the difficulty finding food, and most of all the emotional tension that made everyone especially touchy. A year and a half later, the island is still a federal disaster relief area, but martial law, the Red Cross, and FEMA are long gone, and with them went the media and the public interest. I have friends who have lost everything, yet we all consider ourselves lucky, because we all are by comparison to anyone else who has had it worse. Now the island looks almost normal and everyone goes about their daily life relatively unchanged, but the hurt and feelings of powerlessness remain hidden under the carpet of fast-growing greenery. --- April 1997 I have yet to meet the continental who can understand what living in the V.I. is like, particularly when it comes to hurricanes. I don't care what anyone says about Hurricane Andrew in Florida, the disaster scene on the mainland pales in comparison to that in the V.I. Anyone who has seen their house get blown away and has huddled under their bed for hours knows something about storms, but not about their aftermaths. In the Virgin Islands, aftermath means over a year of being classified as a disaster area; it means months of buying ice and food ever yday; it means noisy generators for a little water; it means looting, chaos, and curfews; it means humvees from Fort Bragg and MREs for meals; it means money from FEMA and shelter from Red Cross; uncleared roads for months; debris everywhere; blue tarps serving as roofs for years and praying every time it starts to rain; it means barbecued turkey for Thanksgiving and long lines to get into stores for ice and food; it means constant reconstruction; it means for months having no phones except expensive cell phones; it means being glued to the radio; it means mosquitoes and dengue; it means massive panic and storm tracking for months each year and bagging all of one's possessions; it means short tempers, closed schools and lost jobs; it means a survival mentality of "today is a little bit better than yesterday". And it is. --- May 28, 1997 I could go to sleep now, except that it has been thundering and lightening and I just don't like that. The lightning and thunder wasn't really bothering me, but then just before 11:00 it started raining, not very heavily at all, but enough to remind me of storms, which I of course don't like. Then the satellite went out so Dad changed to channel five which was viewing the weather. This is a tropical wave. It's still May, and the season has started. I don't like it at all. I had almost forgotten about weather reports and tracking. I don't like the pre-storm stuff at all, the anxiety of "where will it go?" Last year [away at college] I tracked storms. I remember the first weekend and the second week tracking Eduoard, Fran, and Gustave. And I remember Hortense as well. Was I just obsessed with tracking them? Did I feel more helpless because I wasn't here? Or was my interest justified? I know [one of my friends] thought I was pretty crazy. I talked about Marilyn for the first time in awhile with [another friend] a few months ago. I don't have a problem talking about Hugo at all, probably because I was younger at the time and it was something of an adventure and a novelty. For some people Hugo was the harder of the two storms because the result was more of a shock, because no one knew what to expect. For me though, Hugo was, and here comes a bad unintentional pun, breeze compared to Marilyn psychologically. With Marilyn I knew what could happen; I knew that my house wasn't strong enough to keep a storm outside; I knew what the following months would be like; and I knew that in one vital way we had all been wrong. We thought Hugo was a once in a lifetime storm, that another one wouldn't come for twenty or forty years. But Marilyn came six years later, and I had to survive two once-in-a-lifetime storms in the same lifetime. And this time I was smarter, and I knew that if there had been two hurricanes, there was no reason why the future wouldn't bring a third. I never remember tracking hurricanes, except once they were really close, and even in the years between Hugo and Marilyn I don't remember storms. But I do remember tracking all the storms the year of Marilyn, perhaps because there were so many and they really did look like they were going to hit. There was Luis which just missed us enough to spare major damage though we did have to go through the storm itself, there was Aaron in Florida, Jerry when my mom was traveling, Opal when I was traveling, there was Sebastian which fizzled just before us and almost cancelled the PSAT, and there was the big M. The next season we tracked a lot of storms, and both Bertha and Hortense hit, although Bertha was small and Hortense was rain and floods as opposed to wind. I hate hurricane season. --- December 5, 1998 At the end of fourth grade, we made a huge time line. It was a time line of all of our lives. We had a big roll of paper and one sheet of it was for each group of four students. And then we put them all together and covered an entire wall. Most of our time lines were pretty similar: they were divided in two categories: B.H. and A.H., before Hugo and after Hugo. In my mind now, there are several defining points in my life, moments that separate whole stretches of time. But the most drastic change is still marked by that time line, September 17, 1989. Fourth grade: it was a great year. It's one of the years I remember the most about. Kristina and Rachel were my best friends. Ms. White was our teacher. Our school had a brand-new playground/playscape. And it seemed like a more-or-less typical year to us. Three weeks into the school year, Kristina and I were talking on the phone. A hurricane was predicted to hit us in a few years, pretty much dead center. Living in St. Thomas, hurricanes were nothing new to us; they were a fact of life. We'd been through hurricanes, or at least tropical storms, and we were childrend of David and Frederic. Neither of us had been in the eye of a hurricane though. "It'll be so cool," Kristina said. I still remember that. I disagreed. Two weeks later she admitted she was wrong. It's funny how B.H., hurricanes seemed like a such a big deal and yet really they weren't at all. The island didn't panic over them, spend days before preparing and having anxiety attacks. But now we no longer think that the weather will stay outside; we worry, we panic, and even if we are better prepared, each time there is more damage that will never be repaired. We shuttered our house with galvanized aluminum hurricane shutters, same as we always did. Our house has one side facing the ocean that was almost entirely glass. The rest of the house was reinforced concrete, with T1-11 roofing. We got gas, food, water, and batteries. I stood outside that afternoon and watched the sky darken. I stood outside in seventy mph winds. It was like being a kite being pushed against the wall. My mom made me go inside. Hours later I went to sleep in my room, fully dressed, clutching my teddy bear (Blue) in one hand and a flashlight in the other, prepared for ... nothing. I slept soundly for a few hours before my mom woke me and carried me quickly to her room on the other end of the house, the only room in the house without sliding glass doors and with a door separating it from the rest of the house. Don't let the cat get out, she told me. By that point I was wide awake. My mom and our tenant Phebe ran back and forth bringing a mop, a chainsaw, coolers, the computer, television, my mattress, and all the couch cushions. (We had just gotten them re-upholstered and if they were getting ruined, it was going to be over my mom's dead body.) Then, my dad let go of the bending door he was holding up, and they fled to the bedroom, closing the bedroom door behind them. The door rattled and banged all through the night. (Two hurricanes later, the door now has a deadbolt.) The sound of shattering glass was muffled by the howling window. The four of us lay in my parents' queen size bed for four hours. My mother was almost speechless. Our cat Patches clawed at Phebe s leg. My dad and I played cards until the moisture got so thick that the cards were all stuck together and we couldn't shuffle. My mom kept getting up to look out the bathroom window. There was nothing to see. It was night, dark, and there was nothing but rain and wind. You could see the wind, you could smell the rain, feel the air pressure. But it was all on the other side of the door, on the other side of the roof. Power lines whipped through the air, trees crashed, roofs whizzed above our heads, and there was a sound of a train whistle approaching. Somehow the night ended. Hugo was a short storm compared to the later (and fortunately further away) Hurricane Luis, lasting about twenty hours instead of forty. It was morning and almost light out. Not that we could tell from within our shelter. One of the strange things about hurricanes is the complete loss of sense of time. Every hour is the same, not morning or night, just endless. We bailed our way out of the room, mopping at the mess in front of us, filling bucket after bucket with water, glass, and plant matter. The kitchen was blocked by an overturned counter and what of its contents remained inside. The kitchen window had popped out of its frame. It was lying just outside, floating on the rim of water around our swimming pool. It was a smooth sheet of glass, unbroken. I examined it with awe. Somehow amidst the chaos, with all the damage around it, it was unscathed, pure. The rest of the kitchen was not as lucky. That kitchen was one of the funniest things about Hugo. It was completely damaged, but not in any way that I would have expected. We had made peach ice cream the week before, and it was splattered everywhere, leaving the walls speckled with orange in addition to the plastered greens and browns. (My mom never made peach ice cream again) The refrigerator had moved several feet, and its doors no longer closed. The oven, however, more than made up for it. Somehow, with its high-tech self-cleaning feature, it had locked itself shut. (Months later we finally took it apart to get it open; there's a release somewhere buried under the back left burner.) The drawer under the oven contained a package of somewhat thawed hot dog --, not a bad lunch for people who had only eaten potato chips and chocolate bars the night before. Onward through the dining room.... I, who was usually told not to play on the furniture, got to walk on the dining room chairs to avoid some of the broken glass on the floor. All of the living room furniture had shifted to one side, and we had to move it. Here, we had lost two windows (by which I mean huge sliding glass doors), and the room was a swamp of glass, Venetian blinds, video tapes, books, and generally unidentifiable objects. My room had the greatest flooding problem: almost a foot of water had been forced in under the door tracks, but the air pressure had remained constant and none of the windows had popped. We spent the rest of the day mopping and picking up glass. We were in shock. Outside, the yard was a mess. You could see clear across the valley, since there were few trees and absolutely no leaves (a shocking sight for those of us who were used to lush overgrown greenery year-round, and had never seen a temperate climate autumn). Two telephone poles blocked our driveway. Phebe found one of her dresses maybe a hundred yards down the hillside. We spent hours later that week gathering blinds and still only managed to find less than half of them. A southern hemisphere of a globe lay on the remains of our lawn. I never found the northern hemisphere. I wrote in my diary that day, the northern hemisphere has been blown away, half of the world is gone and somehow half still remains. And throughout this whole time, we were alone. There was just us and the radio. In my mind, hurricanes and radios are inexorably linked. I have spent countless days and nights listening to the radio until towers go down. Even after the hurricane, the radio is still the most important thing. Every day for months, Addie, our renowned radio personality, would say today is a little bit better than yesterday. It was a catch, a phrase; it kept the island going from day to day. The hurricane was one thing, but being on an island afterwards was another entirely. In many ways the aftermath was much worse than the storm. There s no escaping and no outside world. Calypsos, FEMA tarps, MREs, bags of ice, cans of gas, and long lines sustained us through the year we were declared a state-of-emergency. The main hurdles were communication, food, water, and ice. It was five days before there was any ice on the island. One bag per family, and the line was hours long. It was only one of the first of long lines I would come to know. For two months without electricity, we would go shopping every day. First there were the lines to get into the store, an hour or so of staring at the door, usually at a sign that said something like "no meat or produce". Then there were the lines to get ice, then the lines to check out, and then the lines at the door where your items were checked against your receipt. It was all a false sense of order. I was lucky in that my school opened a week later. None of the other schools opened until after Christmas. Our headmaster came on the radio one morning and said come to school tomorrow and bring insect repellent. With dengue fever, we didn't need to be told twice. And somehow at school, it was a mostly normal year. For the most part I don't even equate that school year with Hugo. We played truth-or-dare and detective games, had Chinese jump ropes and slap bracelets, sang and danced, kept secrets, and did a bit of growing up. And then we went home, started the Sterno to boil water, continued cleaning, did homework and had dinner by candlelight, and went to bed early. We would turn on the generator for twenty minutes a day so we could all shower. The island community changed, in some ways for the better. Reports spoke of lots of rioting and looting (even by senators), but neighbors also helped each other to rebuild. Friends dropped off ice at each other's houses. A girl in my class whose house had been leveled was staying in a hotel, and she brought a jug full of ice to school every day for the class. It was the best thing ever. We read the newspaper every morning to see if there were any notices that pertained to us (the newspaper and radio were the forms of communication and anyone could submit thirty-word-or-less notices to be printed). We kept a tally on the blackboard of who had electricity and then telephones. We found a live phone wire on a downed pole near our house and tapped in with alligator clips to call the mainland. "We're okay." Send us stuff: flashlights, batteries, camping stoves, mosquito nets, Sterno. We went to Florida for a week in October to buy windows and furniture. We got off the airplane and entered a bright, bustling airport. I had almost forgotten that the rest of the world was continuing as normal. San Francisco had a major earthquake. The Berlin Wall came down, and we read about it in the paper. Then it was Thanksgiving, and we were still without power. (We got power 4 days after Thanksgiving.) Hugo was a "once in a lifetime" storm, and yet six Septembers later, we did it all again. We were older and wiser and better prepared. That is to say, we knew there was really nothing we could do; Marilyn would do as she pleased. We shuttered our windows (our house now containing significantly less glass), bagged all of our possessions (now knowing that water would be inside our house almost immediately), and huddled waiting, listening to the radio. Older and more aware of the potential consequences, we were more disturbed by the potential threat. We lost part of our roof and when we noticed the next day, we commented on having a skylight. We barbecued turkey for Thanksgiving. Six years later, and really the island was only just starting to get back to normal. I don't think it ever will get back to normal now. I think this is just what normal now means. You can't change nature. You can only rebuild. When I go home this Christmas, the island I'll fly over will still have squares of blue. Squares of blue that tourists often mistake for lakes, squares of blue that are tarps where there are still no roofs. But at least there are tarps, we say, and today is a little bit better than yesterday. --- September 5, 2017 Waiting for Hurricane Irma. So. Completely. Fucked. My parents are getting out!! I don't give the house good odds of surviving intact. I don't want my parents to have to go through this again. I don't want to go through this again, even remotely. And what if they choose not to rebuild? --- September 6, 2017 Took today off from work. WSTAs webcam is still up. UVIs station is still on the air. Max sustained winds 185 MPH (at sea level). Hurricane force winds extend outward 50 miles, and the storm is moving at 16 MPH. The approximate Closest Point of Approach (CPA) is located near 18.5N, 64.8W or about 10.9 miles (17.5 km) from your location. The estimated time of when the center of the storm will be at that location is in about 2 hours and 27 minutes from now (Wednesday, September 6 at 3:36PM AST). 11 miles!!! [50 minutes later] ... and the webcame went offline. The storm is now north east of Jost. --- September 13, 2017 My sleep schedule is fubared. Wednesday: The storm. As soon as I lost connectivity, I started working on a donation campaign and other relief efforts. I'm pretty pleased about it. Talked to my parents. Put together a list of things to tell people to check on about the house. Thursday: Talked to my parents. They said [someone] called to say the cottage roof was off. Got in touch with [someone else] who was walking home. My parents were on their way here, and I stayed up way too late. Friday: Sleepy. My parents seemed better than I had expected. Went out for a quiet lunch, punctuated by many phone calls. Tracked Irma and Jose. My parents talked to [people]. Sunday: Spent the day running errands: batteries for phones and tablets. Will Fedex(!) tomorrow. Tuesday: portions. I ate some Chinese leftovers after that. We played more pinochle. I discovered aerial images on crisismaps and eventually tracked down our house. All in better shape than we had expected (expect the worst), so we were slightly relieved; I was pleased to see some palm trees. The island looks bad bad though. --- September 19, 2017 And now we're doing this all over again with Maria, St Croix getting the worst of it. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Waiting. Being stuck in my head at age 15. Doing various relief effort stuff. Emailing people who emailed me. Talking to [fellow Virgin Islander coworker] a lot. --- September 20, 2017 So much rain. Lots of flooding. Including some in my parents house, not sure how much or from where. But the roof and walls are there. St Croix looks hit hard, but not as hard as I'd feared (I feared a lot). --- January 4, 2018 Wednesday [person] showed up with a crew to sort the cottage garbage (pulling out furniture, bagging wet sheet rock, etc). They made pretty good progress. [Other people] showed up in the afternoon and changed the battery in the car and drove it away at last.