Mrs Monk and the Hurricane
(An Obsessive Neatnik Confronts The Storm)

This column is written for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to be used as a hurricane preparedness guide.

If you're anything like me (and hopefully you're not) you must have everything in order all the time. Nothing must ever been out of order. Your family complains but you've gotten used to that.

And then a hurricane comes along and throws everything into disorder. So what does your average OC do. The same thing as everyone else: prepare for it, but a little more. Here's the schedule I followed for Ivan and Dean, and a few others that luckily did not hit.

When a hurricane gets close enough to start worrying about, which for me is when its about 2 days outside the Caribbean. Of course I've already pruned trees, made sure I have adequate plywood, tarpaulins, etc sometime in early May. The generator is serviced, battery lamps are working properly. Radio, lights, etc all have three sets of batteries. I do not use kerosene, it is messy, dangerous and it smells. The roof is checked and any suspicious area is repaired.

The hurricane has now crossed the islands, now is the time to watch every single update, examine all computer models, probability of a hit, likely wind speed, etc.

The hurricane is now four days away, I move into high gear; I recheck everything I've already checked five or six times since May. My gardener and I go around the garden and prune the Night Jasmine, the June Roses and all the brittle plants down to about four or five feet high. Roses are also pruned as they tend to uproot. Cuttings, along with any bits and pieces lying around are thrown away. Empty flower pots, etc are packed away. I try for the thousandth time to convince my neighbour to prune his thirty foot mango tree but, as usual, nothing happens. My long suffering husband then climbs the neighbour's tree and cuts off one or two of the more dangerous looking branches but I will nevertheless clear out the bedroom nearest the tree in case it should fall in our direction.

Three days to go. Take care of the shopping, check the store cupboard and make a list, this is very important. You do not want thirty tins of bully beef and nothing else.  Buy lunchbox sized containers of milk, juices, etc. Plan for a week. Remember paper plates, paper towels, Purell, Lysol and bleach, lots of bleach; bleach is going to be your best friend. After the storm, when toilets cannot be flushed as often as they should you will need bleach. When people and pets are walking in and out with muddy paws you will need bleach. When you run out of drinking water and need to chlorinate water you will need bleach. Make sure your water jug has a new filter. ODPEM recommends adding 1/8 teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water and letting it stand for thirty minutes. I let it stand overnight then run through my Brita to remove the taste. Brita does not remove germs, it removes impurities. I figure overnight is more than enough time for the bleach to kill the germs before I pour it through the filter jug. Boiling water is excellent but it takes too long for the kettle to cool. When I use large cooking pots there always seems to be a flavour of food to it. Though once it cools it could be poured through the filter jug as well. If you have cats buy adequate cat litter or sand and set up a litter box; even after the storm cats are not going to go to the bathroom in a muddy yard. If you have dogs now's the time to give them a bath, you will be locked in close quarters with them for about twenty-four hours. Do the laundry. I run the washing machine empty through a rinse cycle with a cup of bleach then let it fill. That water can be used for washing dishes and as drinking water for the pets. Overwater all the house plants.

Two days, the storm is still heading straight for us. My poor husband goes up on the roof and lays tarpaulins over the areas which have already been repaired. The plywood cut to size for the breeze block wall of the family room is secured in place. Windows are checked for loose screws. The car is gassed and the jerry can for the generator is filled. This is the point where I turn my fridge into an icebox. I take everything out & wipe the fridge with bleach water: one cup to a gallon of water. I go through everything and throw out anything that looks suspicious. I keep enough perishables to last a week and take the rest to my nearest charity. It's better to give away good food than throw away spoiled food. If you do not have a generator keep enough food for three days. I then start making ice. I have two very small picnic coolers which I fill with ice and put at either side of the fridge freezer. I then fill several two litre juice bottles with water and freeze them. Even with a generator you will not have your fridge running all the time. I then cook all the meat I've kept. Cooked meat keeps longer and you do not want to be handling raw meat and cooking when you're rationing water. All meals are the refreezed. At this time I also gather important documents, valuables and photo albums and pack them in a plastic bin which I put on the bed in the guest room which is in the centre of the house. Don't fill your bathtub with water for flushing; I discovered long ago after Gilbert that the bath plug which you think seals perfectly will allow a bathtub full of water to drain out in a few days. Four five gallon plastic buckets fit perfectly in a bathtub and are easier to refill if water is off for days.

The hurricane is now twenty-four hours away. I lay all the large potted plants over on their side. Inward opening doors are secured, my house has five external doors only two which open inward. Do not board yourself into the house. There was a tragic story of a family who boarded up their front door from the outside and a landslide came down at the back and trapped them. If you only have two doors and both open inwards, try using multiple locks down the length of the door and hoping for the best. Or changing them to outward opening long before hurricane season. I then take down all my curtains and put them away. All valuable items too large to fit in my plastic bin are carried into the guest room. All the verandah furniture is brought inside. All small items in that bedroom next to the neighbour's tree are cleared out and the furniture covered with garbage bags and duct tape. The cooking gas cylinders are disconnected and lashed against the back grill.

We're as ready as we can be, all that's left to do is wait. At least after the storm has passed I will have some control over what happens.

The hurricane is passed. The house is dry and the damn mango tree has not fallen on my roof. We tentatively open the back door and are pushed aside by seven stir-crazy animals dashing out. There are leaves everywhere, some pasted to the walls. One limb has broken off an ackee tree and the top has snapped off a variegated ficus, that's all. The shrimp  are leaning over but they'll be ok. My husband says he feels embarrassed to take out one tree limb to the curb when all the neighbours are making huge piles. But they should have pruned their trees in May.

There's no denying it, you are going to be stressed. So now you have mud coming in, you wear your house slippers outside and your yard slippers inside and the dogs and cats run in and out. You clean up the yard. Now's the time to prop and stake the plants that have blown over, the ground is still soft and they should survive. All the potted plants and verandah furniture is put back out. The living room and bedroom are put back in order. The generator is cranked up and you now start to get used to the sound of hundreds of generators going. The gas cylinders are reconnected and you take dinner out to to thaw and suddenly realise that thankfully it's already cooked as there is absolutely no way you would have the energy to cook at this exact point in time. You learn to bathe in a gallon of water and flush toilets very seldom. One bathroom is designated the "outhouse" and a gallon of bleach, a bottle of Purell and a tin of air freshener is kept there along with many buckets of water. The door to this room is kept closed til the water comes back on.

A very serious word of advice. A generator is a very useful thing when there is no power but it can also be extremely dangerous. Make sure it is properly serviced. Fill it every morning and check the oil before you turn it on. Do not try to fill it when it is running, you can blow yourself up. Keep it outside or in a well ventilated area, the fumes can poison you. Do not run it near to anything flammable like piles of newspapers or the jerry can of gas you have to refill it. Know how much power each of your appliances uses and do not overload the generator. If you have it tied into your home's electrical system make sure this is done by a licensed electrician. Do not try to run your air conditioning, electric stove or water heater with it. Hotels and large companies who have million dollar generators which can run twenty-four hours a day also have trained electricians who monitor them twenty-four hours a day; and even then, accidents can happen. Turn it off before you go to bed at night; you too can lay in the dark and listen to "Dear Pastor" on your battery radio like the rest of Jamaica. If it's unbearably hot, as it often is after a hurricane, then invest in a battery operated fan. If you bring the generator indoors at night allow it to cool first and store it where it does not touch anything else.

Back to me. When the water comes back, I mop all the floors with bleach water. They are always dirty, not just in the areas you would expect. I continue to use bottled water or homemade purified water for drinking, brushing teeth and cooking. I continue to wash dishes in a basin. I will use tap water with a half cup of bleach added to it. By this time I've gone through two or three gallons of bleach and the skin on my hands is stripping in spite of gloves. I've reached a point of stress when I'm glad I put part of the house back in order when the adrenalin was still pumping because even I feel as if I will never again have enough energy to put the middle guest room where I've stored everything back in order or the room which was cleared out in case of falling mango tree. I close these doors, locking those rooms out of sight and mind for now while I gradually put back curtains and get the rest of the house back to normal. And every night I am glad that I have a cooked meal as the adrenalin is going down & I'm totally exhausted all the time.

My husband may have another week of peace before I get back to my normal compulsive self. But I've already started to watch every puff of wind that blows off the African coast and to count my batteries.

Betty S.
31st August 2007

 

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