From pcrane@media1.caribsurf.com Mon Nov 22 14:17:12 1999 Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 15:07:51 -0400 From: Crane Peter To: Gert van Dijken Subject: Re: The Lenny Experience! You got your warning! Here it is. Regards, Peter Crane Lenny - Our Story On Sunday afternoon, 14 November 1999, a friend telephoned us to say that there was another hurricane 'out there'. Not having cable TV I checked with the internet and found that, though huge, it was far to the West of us and was predicted to move North-East, thus missing us by a safe margin. On Monday morning its predicted move to the North had not materialized and it was heading straight at us but was STILL predicted to veer to the North. By Tuesday morning it was still coming straight at us (even more so) so I got out the check-list. Although it was still predicted to turn North, just in case, I went to the garage and stocked up with fuel for the generator! By Lunch-time it was looking grim. Lenny was not turning and it was time to act. My wife, Eugenie, and I started rushing around doing our preparations. Many of the preparations that we had made for Hurricane Jose (a month earlier) were still OK so, for example, we didn't need to buy batteries and were stocked up with tin food. Some items, such as turning up the freezer, were done in seconds but others, such as tying young and vulnerable trees to stakes, took longer. By mid-afternoon the rain was falling and we still hadn't finished. We rushed around tidying up the yard, turning yard tables upside down, removing garden tools and wheel-barrow, carrying plant pots from the gallery into the house and so on. After a brief rest I checked the internet and the so-and-so was getting bigger and closer! Rain was falling hard and it was sunset and we still hadn't closed any hurricane shutters. We went round, in the darkness, trying to close them. Some of them had become swollen by the passage of Hurricane Jose and we decided to leave those until the morning, closing those that we could. At 6pm the electricity went off and stayed off until 11pm! I turned on our generator, using up precious fuel, because we still had a lot to do. Back into the house and it was time to cover furniture with plastic sheeting etc. In the morning it was clear that the Hurricane was NOT going to shift North to any great extent and was going to pass quite close to the North of us. The wind was picking up and the rain was coming down quite hard but Eugenie and I went up ladders trying to fix the swollen shutters. Two of them defeated us! I turned off the bottled gas and brought a camp stove in from the store room. I then boarded up a double door that doesn't have shutters. I, personally, feel quite claustrophobic when the shutters are closed. That is particularly true when the power fails and the power ALWAYS fails during a huuricane. Our neighbour was working away from home so we invited his partner to come round. They don't have a generator or cistern so when the electricity and water goes she would have found life hard. She came and stayed with us for three days. By lunch-time all our preparations were complete and the weather was turning quite foul so I fed our two yard dogs. We don't tie our dogs. They have a free run of the (large) yard and they have two large dog houses that face in different directions that they could use if they wanted to. I have NEVER seen them go, voluntarily, to their dog houses! They like to sleep on our front porch or on the kitchen steps. There are plenty of 'corners' around the house that they could hide in if they wanted to. After we had OUR lunch I put a report in on the 'internet' notice board. So, the story so far - we are ready and waiting for the hurricane to arrive. In all honesty, by this time my wife and I were completely shattered! The stress of waiting is really very unpleasant. By 5pm, Wednesday 17 November 1999, the storm arrived. Because our gallery was in the lee of the storm we ventured out for a look-see. Lord-a-mercy! Lightning all around us! The thunder merged into a continuous bombardment of noise. The Battle of Waterloo might have sounded the same! The RAIN! It was horizontal. No, that is not true. Most of the time it was horizontal but some gusts pushed it down and some gusts pushed it UP!! A little faster and it might have attained orbital escape velocity! And we were only on the Hurricane's edge! We looked to the sea and saw the most monstrous waves we have EVER seen crashing towards the shore. The wind threatened to throw us over the gallery rail so we scuttled back into the house. We still had telephone facilities (which remained over the whole storm - amazing) and we still had electricity so I put in another report on the 'notice-board'. We passed the time, with the storm intensifying until about 9pm and some shingles being blown off the roof, and went to bed at about 11pm when the storm had become a little less fierce. We awoke, on Thursday morning, to find that the storm was still blowing and the electricity had 'gone'. On went the generator and, for the next two days, I kept turning it on and off. I didn't have enough fuel to keep it going continuously (who does?) so, in effect, I rationed it. We used it for about 15 minutes in the hour to keep the freezer cold, at critical times and also after dark. The storm was too bad to go out and feed the dogs so I got a couple of handfuls of biscuits, ran outside, threw them down for the dogs (who were leaping at me - "come and play") and ran back inside. We 'hunkered down' playing word games and things like that with the occasional accompanying sound of shingles flying. If you've never experienced it I must tell you that shingles don't simply fly away! Oh no! They loosen and bend across the middle. The wind can then catch them and they SLAP down hard on the roof for a while before they finally break off and then they fly away. Anyone will tell you that the noise of that slapping is really very terrifying! On Friday morning it was still raining and blowing but not too hard. Some rain had come in under the kitchen door and the laundry door. Some water was also running down the kitchen wall where some shingles had disappeared from the roof during the night. I checked on the dogs and fed them. They wanted me to spend some time with them but it was too wet so I ran back in, much to their obvious disappointment. Reports were coming in that St. Croix and St. Martin were really badly damaged. The rain eased to a drizzle and, because my stock of generator fuel was running very low, I went out and siphoned some from our vehicle into fuel cans. I had just about finished when the storm became fierce again and I scuttled back in. Amazingly, electricity came back on for a few minutes during the afternoon and I was able to put another report on the 'notice-board'. The electricity didn't last long! Friday evening was bad. The hurricane came South but was dropping from category 2 to category 1 as it passed less than 25 miles to the East of us. We lost A LOT of shingles that night. On Saturday morning the rain had eased. In fact it stopped altogether for brief periods and then we got heavy showers again - and so on. We were able to have a quick check on the yard and see how many trees had been blown down or been damaged. The dogs were SO delighted to walk round with us - pathetic really! No, I don't mean that. We love them and they love us. By early afternoon we could just see some small patches of blue in the sky. Electricity came and went throughout the evening. Sunday morning - A beautiful Caribbean morning! The sky was an unbroken deep blue and the sun was shining. There was a pleasant gentle cooling breeze. The sea was calm and it was a beautiful turquoise colour. Had it only been a bad dream? NO!! We opened most of the shutters. Eugenie and I cut down the fallen banana trees and, generally, we started cleaning up the yard. Eugenie mopped up and started the laundry while I replaced the clothes line (a rotary drier). I started to use the weed-eater to trim the grass which was waist-high in places. And that was it! A lot of work before the storm - an amazing amount of stress during the storm - and a lot of work after the storm. I'm getting too old for this foolishness! >* >** >*** Gert van Dijken ( gert@vandijken.com ) >**** The Caribbean Hurricane Page - http://www2.gobeach.com/hurr.htm