After the Storm

Spent the last two days surveying the damage wreaked by Hurricane Fabian and starting to clean up. It's going to take a while before life is back to normal, though. I just hope the wedding isn't going to be badly affected.

Fabian turned out to be the worst storm to hit Bermuda for the last 50 years. The damage has been enormous. Trees have been uprooted everywhere and those still standing stripped of so many of their leaves that it now looks like winter. Lots of people have lost at least a part of their roofs. The Causeway that links St. George's and the airport to the rest of the Island has been swept away in several places; four people were killed trying to cross as the hurricane force winds started in the afternoon. Wooden homes have been completely destroyed. One side of St. George's Preparatory School was smashed to rubble and its back wall peeled off, probably by a tornado. The Carriage House restauarant, one of St. George's best and most popular, has been smashed beyond recognition. Many boats have been thrown up on the shore, some sunk. On Saturday, the day after the storm hit, the ocean was an incredible pale blue, lighter than the sky, due to all the sand from the beaches that has been sucked into it.

Closer to home, we lost a large part of the roof over our porch and the metal pin anchoring the incoming electricity line to our house was pulled out of the wall (along with a large chunk of the wall). Numerous trees in our yard have been broken, one completely felled. All the exterior walls and windows, particularly on the south side, have been blasted by a salty green mixture of leaves, twigs, dirt and other small debris.

Initially the prospect of cleaning up was depressing. We had no electricity to run a vacuum cleaner and no water (the pump to get the water out of our tank requiring power to run). The balcony needs a hose down to clear off all the mud and leaves but even if we had water there would be no easy way to get a hose there. So it was with great relief that, at 11pm on Saturday evening, less than 32 hours after the power went off we returned home to find that the boys from BELCO had worked a miracle and all the lights in the house were shining once again.

Bobby and Verna's house, Starboard Light, the venue for our wedding reception in just three weeks time, escaped largely unscathed. However their banana patch has been levelled and their pool filled with debris - and the top part of a cedar tree. Their power was restored 24 hours after ours - a big relief for many reasons, not least that after Emily they were without power for 4 weeks and 3 days and a similar delay this time could have really messed up our plans for the wedding reception! Their worst loss was their yacht, Thistle Dew, which had its mast completely broken off when another boat smashed into her. We managed to salvage spar, boom and sail and all the damage should be repairable, but sailing is sadly no longer going to be an option for any of the wedding guests who will start arriving later this week. The warehouse for Godet & Young, the hardware store in St. George's run by Mandy's parents, was also badly damaged, with the loss of a lot of its roof and consequent damage (from a combination of rain and falling slates and plaster) to the stock and office that it housed.

It's been difficult to get an idea of the scale of the damage elsewhere on the Island - the emergency broadcast radio station seems to be spending all its time playing music rather than relaying useful facts or news about what was going on. Almost all the news we've heard has come by word of mouth. Even though the power is back on, cable TV is out and we still seem unable to pick up the three local broadcast stations.

There's a very different feeling to a normal Sunday evening in the air. It seems unlikely that I'll be able to get to work tomorrow as the Causeway is unlikely to be open (and if it is, everyone and their dog will be queuing up to use it as traffic will be restricted to single file) and as the fast ferry dock in St. George's was also washed away, ferry also seems like an unlikely way of getting to town. But at least another day off work will give Mandy and I some more time to clean up around Newstocks. We've spent a lot of time over the last couple of days helping out down at Godet & Young, both serving in the shop and cleaning up the warehouse, and it would be good to be able to concentrate on getting our place looking a bit more normal again. Especially with my parents due to arrive on Thursday.

Comments

[Jonathan Seaton on 08.09.03 at 04:35]

Really great photos! I mean awesome - much better than CNN and Fox News.

Glad to see most of BMA excaped relatively well. I'll be calling our St George's apartment later to day to see if it's still there!

Any beaches left?