Maria Arrives

At 6am Wednesday morning, September 20th, the hurricane force winds had arrived in Isabela. We moved into the closet bunker and tried to go back to sleep. Without any fans or open windows, the closet was stuffy and sticky. Temperature wise it wasn’t so bad, around 82 degrees, but with the humidity it was pretty uncomfortable. After a few hours I started pressing my hands and arms into the concrete walls to cool them off. Many locals had warned us about the noise a hurricane would make. They were not wrong. The howling winds were relentless. Even louder were the exhaust vents from the bathrooms. They were banging open and closed which reverberated down through the pipes in the concrete walls. We could also hear water running and dripping in the walls. Lucy slept through most of this. Thunder really bothers her, but apparently creepy haunted house howling winds are just fine. Every once in a while I poked my head out to look at what was left of the palm tree outside our bedroom window. I knew what wind directions to expect in each quadrant of the hurricane. This way we could know which part of the storm we were in. We had experienced 2 of the 3 winds, and as we waited for the final shift suddenly everything went silent.

At 1pm, all the noise stopped. There was no rain, no wind, not even the slightest breeze. Holy shit we’re in the eye of the hurricane! It was the most eerie experience of my life. Dead quiet. After 45 minutes of calm, we began to wonder where the rest of the hurricane was, and we climbed out of the closet to have a look. Our main living area was covered in 4 inches of water. From the balcony we could see two concrete power poles down and palm trees down blocking our road. We trudged through to the back rooms and peeked down into the parking lot, only to discover all of our neighbors wandering around outside! They yelled up to us that the AM radio said the hurricane force winds were over, only tropical storm force winds and rain remained. We knew this could not be the case, but we snuck down to let the dog outside and had a quick visit with everyone. Everything was filthy. Our stairwell was full of leaves and water. Sand, rocks, mangroves, broken windows, pieces of our metal security gates, and pieces of street lights littered the ground. Our car had not been damaged. The most troubling site was the generator. There it sat, crooked in the parking lot, blown off of its platform. Our neighbor informed us that the fuel cap had blown open and the diesel was contaminated with rain water. SHIT. So much for turning on the generator the next day. That thing may not turn on for the next 6 months.

Everyone made their way back inside. My jaw was hanging open as we stood on our balcony and watched the monster 40 foot waves crashing into the cliffs below. The water had turned an ugly brown. We began to realize how much of the coast and town we were suddenly able to see – the trees had just been destroyed all around us. We grabbed a dust pan and a squeegee and pushed as much water as we could out of the floor of our condo. 3 HOURS LATER the south side of the hurricane finally arrived and the winds and banging pipes started up again. Why the eye lasted so long we have no idea. We stayed in the closet until 11pm, at which time the winds had died down to tropical storm force and we knew our windows could handle it. We had survived the most intense part of the hurricane. That was the easy part. Now to survive in the aftermath.