On Tuesday, September 4th 2007 I lived through my first hurricane. It came bursting onto the coast of Nicaragua with a category 5 rating. It took out whole villages and caused gusts of wind up to 180 miles per hour. Due to the trajectory of it we were, as Peace Corps volunteers, told to group together depending on our location. The city in which I live is in fact the meeting point, so I was to stay in a hotel until further notice. It is a bit awkward telling your native friends and neighbors that you are being evacuated due to the danger and good luck to them. I packed belongings with the possibility, if things got really bad, everything left in my house would be ruined. Basically that consisted of my I-Pod, Camera, Lap Top and Passport. I rushed to the hotel, as the skies could not look less threatening.
The first night, all of the volunteers in my area were together and watching, on CNN, the advancement of the swirling red ball. Like every weather report, things were changing moment to moment. At one moment it was heading north of us, the other it was losing strength, next moment it was regaining strength. Still the night sky was clear and star filled. The next day, it had hit Nicaragua directly on the Caribbean coast at a category 5. It was coming directly at us in the north, and still holding strong, but having dropped to a category 4. We were told that it was to hit my location around noon. The skies at around 11 am began getting a bit cloudy and drizzle began to fall. We were hidden away in the safety of our hotel, but outside the children were still going to school and it was a normal day for all the rest of the city. I asked around a bit about past hurricanes and I was told that in our town, surrounded by miles of mountains, there is never any major impact by the winds of a hurricane, but the rain is what to watch out for. It causes flash floods and mudslides.
Come noon the outer reaches of the hurricane, according to the Doppler radar, were touching my city. The rained increased a bit, but still no wind to speak of. This continued all afternoon. At about 6 pm the storm had lost power, but still was advancing strong. It was directly above us at this point. The rain never got any stronger than a torrential drizzle and the winds were a whipping 2-3 miles per hour. The volunteers all huddled in my hotel room, watching DVDs and drinking vodka, sprites and pineapple juice. Were clearly were all terrified. I had experienced rain much harder since I have been here as well as stronger winds. Well that was about it. Nothing much ever materialized and it had moved on to Honduras.
I do not want to take anything away from the hurricane, it certainly did some damage on the coast. I was kind of hoping though for a bit more excitement. I am the type who likes to watch a bull fight in hopes of a god goring, or watching a car race for the accidents. I guess I should consider myself lucky that things were not worse. As of today, two days later, things are back to normal as if nothing ever happened. I did feel somewhat ridiculous to return to my neighborhood and see everyone again. I am sure they were thinking, “are you going to be evacuated for every rainstorm?”
I can now say that I am a hurricane survivor.
