As I am writing this blog post, the wind is howling outside, rain is lashing the windows and there is a pretty spectacular lightning display happening across the horizon. This is not, however, a hurricane and a Tropical Storm warning has recently been lifted after Tropical Storm Earl veered West in the Caribbean sea and towards Belize and Mexico instead of the Cayman Islands (heads up, amigos!).
However, after two days of warnings and already two months into hurricane season, I thought it was about time I enlighten you all as to the wonders of living on a hurricane-prone island.
Hurricanes for the Uninitiated
The short and sweet version of a hurricane is this: Wizard of Oz plus water minus munchkins. A more technical explanation might include mention that warm humid air rises up from warm ocean water, starts as a collection of thunder storms, moisture and heat energy fuel the storms and they start spiralling, when the speed of the cyclonic wind reaches 23mph, the storm is classified as a tropical depression, it then gets upgraded to a tropical storm when winds exceed 39mph and then voila! becomes a hurricane when wind speeds exceed 74mph and can hit up to 225mph. I obviously prefer my explanation.
The hurricane season in the Caribbean runs from 1 June to 30 November every year and in this time, about 10 to 12 tropical storms develop in the region, about half of which become hurricanes. Statistically, Cayman is brushed or hit by a tropical storm or hurricane every 1.68 years and sustains a direct hit from a hurricane every 5.3 years. I am only mildly (i.e. quite) concerned that we are now 5 years overdue for a hurricane. No biggie....
Hurricane Ivan
The last serious hurricane to affect the island was Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It hit Grand Cayman at category 5 (technically known as the Voldemort/Lord Sauron category) on 12 September 2004. The eye of the storm was just 8 miles from Grand Cayman and wind speeds during the storm were between 160 and 217mph. The storm surge, which caused much of the damage, was between 8 and 10 feet and covered most of the island because Grand Cayman is largely flat.
One quarter of the island remained submerged by water 2 days later, 90% of buildings on the island were damaged to some extent, 25% of homes were uninhabitable and 2 people died. It took months to reconnect power, water or sewerage to some parts of the island and 5 months later only half of the hotel rooms on the island were habitable. The damage to the island was estimated to be US$2.86 billion, which is 1.8 times the GDP. It was the 10th most intense hurricane ever recorded.
These three pictures show the before-Ivan, post-Ivan and present-day images of the Grand Cayman Hyatt Britannia Resort, which was one of the nicest hotels on the island and was used for shooting the movie “The Firm.” The damage from Ivan was so severe that it was never rebuilt and remains a shell.
How to Survive a Hurricane
In view of the Cayman experience of hurricanes, the Cayman Islands motto is BE PREPARED! This is their official brochure which really induces calm, I think.
The whole first week of June is dedicated to talking about hurricane preparedness, which my friends and I realised we had completely ignored when storm warnings started coming in this week. And so it was that I and three of my fellow relatively-new-expats (for whom this is the first hurricane season on island) resolved on Monday night to go hurricane survival kit shopping together. It was obviously a very serious and somber affair.
Luckily, we all live in the same building so could divvy up the supplies a bit so for example, one person has the chocolate (not me thankfully or it wouldn't be there when the hurricane hits) one person has lollies, one takes paper plates while the other takes plastic cutlery etc. On Monday night we headed off to Cost u Less (like Costco) with our checklists (from which I wasn't allowed to deviate, notwithstanding that I think I made a compelling argument that a pool noodle would be helpful in an emergency)
About $150 later we had a selection of the following:
- tinned food (soup, salmon/tuna, vegetables)
- snacks (crackers, muesli bars, fruit cups)
- fun food (Reese's pieces, Hershey's chocolate, sour worms) - not strictly on the list but we felt it was important for morale
- torches
- batteries
- duct tape
- tarpaulin
- thick gloves
- plastic bags
- baby wipes
- hand sanitizer
- 24 bottles of water per person
- toilet rolls
- plastic cutlery and plates
- first aid kit
- mosquito coils
- insect repellant.
Just to be absolutely clear, all of this stuff sits in a sealed box somewhere in your apartment so you have it when a hurricane hits. That's $150 of stuff you don't even get to use! They also recommend getting battery powered fans, oil lamps, sleeping bags - all of which become outrageously expensive unless you're Bear Grylls, which I am clearly not. If the shopping hadn't been so much fun, I would really have resented the expense. And I'm pretty sure by the time something actually happens, the water will have leaked, the batteries will be dead, the baby wipes will have dried up and the snacks will have gone mouldy, but apparently that's the risk you have to take in paradise!
In any event, I'm now prepared for anything that comes my way (whether it's a hurricane or I decide to become a hermit) between now and the end of November! If anyone is planning to visit me around that time, there is a good chance that the only thing I will be offering you are muesli bars, crackers, tinned fish and sour worms on paper plates with plastic cutlery, washed down with stale bottled water, offset with mood lighting provided by a torch, fragranced courtesy of mosquito coils. Don't all RSVP at once!
