[lace-chat] Hurricane Juan (long)

[Margot Walker]

Well, I lived through the Montreal ice storm and now I've lived through 
a hurricane in Halifax.  We usually get 3 to 4 tail ends of hurricanes 
every Fall.  They're pretty big storms - take shingles off roofs, uproot 
a few trees.  But we haven't had a hurricane since the early 60s.  So no 
one is really prepared for one.  Halifax harbour was supposed to be the 
landfall of hurricane Juan at 6:00 p.m., Sun. night.  The place was 
right, but it didn't hit until 11:30 p.m.  I got out my boxes of 
emergency supplies, which include lots of candles and a wind-up radio, 
closed the windows, and since nothing was happening, I went to bed.  The 
wind woke me up at 11:00, so I lit some candles and got the radio 
going.  A state of emergency had been declared at 9:30 and everyone who 
lived lower than 6 vertical feet above high tide had to leave their 
homes.  I live in a 10 storey building, across the street from the 
harbour.  I wasn't concerned about the water reaching my flat, 10 
stories up, but I wondered what would happen if the foundations of the 
building were pummeled by the water.  So I looked out the window and 
tried to calculate how high the basement was above the high tide mark.  
I figured we'd be okay (and I was right) but I got dressed and packed an 
overnight bag just in case.  I'm on the lee side of this building, but 
the wind and rain was fantastic.  The wind was even opening the windows, 
so I had to lock them.  Then we were warned to stay away from windows in 
case they blew out.  Every so often I would go out on my balcony, which 
is enclosed, to try to see what was going on.  You couldn't see anything 
since we lost electric power early on, but every so often a car would go 
by and I could see that the road wasn't flooded.  But the winds were 
fierce - up to 180km an hour.

At 3:00 a.m., the radio tried to contact the Canadian Hurricane Centre 
and finally got an employee at home.  They'd been evacuated.  Since I 
was looking out at their offices, 2 blocks from here, I got a little 
nervous to say the least.  Shelters were set up in various parts of 
town, but at that point I wouldn't have been able to get to one.  The 
eye of the hurricane passed right over my building and the Hurricane 
Centre, but the calm didn't last very long.  So I went to bed.  I woke 
up at 5:30, when the hurricane had passed by.  I think the quiet woke me 
up, and also I was roasting.  I looked at my indoor/outdoor thermometer 
and it showed an outside temperature of 81 degrees F.  I couldn't see 
very much since all my windows were covered with a greasy film and 
ground up leaves from trees.  However, by noon, the rain had got rid of 
most of that.

My building has no damage at all and the immediate neighbourhood isn't 
too bad:  some trees down, the wood from a wharf is all over the railway 
tracks, shops signs gone, one store has lost all its windows, the 
chimney and outside stairs of a 3 storey building are in matchsticks.  
But the city as a whole is devastated.  Some streets are still 
impassable because of downed trees.  All the city parks are closed.  The 
Public Gardens in downtown Halifax, which was planted in Queen 
Victoria's time, is flattened.  All the trees uprooted, etc.  All the 
wharfs on the Halifax side of the harbour were under 5 feet of water.  
The ferry terminus there was destroyed and one of the harbour tour boats 
ended up on top of a wharf.  The bridges were closed until yesterday 
afternoon.  Most fishermen have lost everything - boats, sheds, 
equipment, etc.

We got electric power back late yesterday afternoon before the food in 
my freezer had started to thaw.  Luckily I had stocked up and it was 
full, so the food stayed frozen.  Thank god that I always keep an 
emergency supply of canned food and I'd be lost without my fondue 
burner.  It's amazing what you can cook on it.  There are still 
thousands of people without power and very few shops are open  We don't 
realize how much retail businesses depend on electricity.  Without it, 
gas station pumps don't work, neither do cash registers nor bank 
machines.  Thank god too that I don't own a house.  All my home-owning 
friends have some damage either from flooding or uprooted trees.

Compared to my Montreal ice storm experience (10 days without 
electricity or heat and -25C outside), this was a piece of cake.  
However, it was a minor hurricane.  I can't imagine what it would be 
like to live through a major one.

Margot Walker in Halifax on the east coast of Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line:
unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]