The waiting time

At first this was something to laugh off; then it was a little exciting, the prospect of an adventure looming, but now with the stark reality staring us in the face its just scary. The entire mood of the Island has changed and you can see the concern in everyone's face. Everything really began to get serious when we got to work around noon. Students started calling about classes this evening because they were leaving work to buy supplies and ply wood. When Katie called workplaces today she got answering machines and we all started looking around and realizing everything at the college that wasn't ready. Then the TV appearance for tomorrow was cancelled as the morning show will just be on weather preparations and all the little signs came crashing down on us that this is really happening.

We prepared an ad hoc hurricane plan with 33 different tasks to complete for the college. The plan is from three people who have never been through a hurricane and one who has been through several so who knows if we covered everything. We immediately started implementing the plan as best we could. I went to A.L Thompson hardware to get supplies for the college and a store that had been empty two hours earlier when Katie and I stopped for our supplies was now packed. The supermarket next door had a full parking lot in the middle of the day as well. Katie began moving all the student files into the records room filing cabinets all but one (which was donated Tuesday) of which have damage from Ivan. We cant use any of the bottom drawers because of flooding concerns so moving files in and securing them was a good eight hour long task While Katie did that I began moving computers, chairs, supplies, books and everything else to inside rooms without windows. We have no plywood for the college windows and so I spent part of the evening trying to run that down but so far no luck.

Dr. Cummings and April are not on Island yet and even though they are scheduled to arrive tomorrow there is a good chance the government will not allow in coming flights with people just empty planes for evacuation and besides we don't have food for them. Our business manager is also off island so the college is understaffed as it is.

Tomorrow we will go in early and spend the morning moving everything in the college to safe locations. Hopefully the construction company I spoke with tonight that rebuilt the college will get plywood out to board up at least some of the windows by Saturday evening. In any event at 2 p.m. we are leaving and worrying about our own place. The new house is great but apparently not in the best neighborhood for flooding. Something that we probably should have been a little more curious about two weeks ago. The house is raised but the neighborhood around isn't so there is a chance with severe flooding we could be trapped.

The strange thing is the current weather, sunny and nice. You would never know from looking at the sky what was headed this way. This really is just a period of waiting and watching and constantly checking the net and the radio for updates.

We are debating whether to ride out the storm at a shelter, here at our new home or at the residence of our librarian. We have plywood and nails for the two downstairs windows but nothing right now for the upstairs one and that is what we will spend tomorrow afternoon working on. If we get sufficient covering for the windows we will ride it out here. We don't want to ride it out at the college because the roof leaks, it is in a worse flood plain than our place (of course the whole Island is a flood plain not being much above sea level anywhere), and there is no way to cover all the windows so flying objects would be a tremendous concern. All of the students we talked tonight were glad we don't still live at the college. Even as they warned us about Selkirk drive they said it was better than the college.

The storm looks like it will come through Monday morning. The track is for the eye to be south of the Island. It should be a category four while it passes us at around 8 a.m. Monday then lessening as it heads for the Yucatan Peninsula and then into the Gulf of Mexico. We will keep updating the blog through Sunday afternoon and early evening until we have to move everything or go to a public shelter. If the storm looks like it will track right for the island we are looking at flights but right now there are literally no flights off the island on line so that must mean only evacuation flights. We will make some calls in the morning and see.

Not to be dramatic but keep a good thought for us. This isn't fun.