Hurricaine Thane

I've been meaning to update this blog for sometime, as usual, however it was a decent pain in the ass to use internet before; after the hurricane the power is still out 10 days later so just getting a charge on my computer is really difficult. They predict it will be 3-4 weeks before power is restored. So I'm living the rural indian life without electricity. They've finally got the computer lab back up so even though the place is blown out I've found a plug and took the last chair to sit in this hot corner and post some pics.

The hurricane was.. a real hurricane. The wind picked up wednesday morning (10 days ago), blew all day, and at some point it started raining. By thursday night the winds were raging full blast - the eye of the storm literally passed over us. The winds raged all night, we hardly slept at all wondering when these shitty little window slats were going to blast in, the curtains the only thing between us and the wind (no building is actually sealed with anything but a screen here). Things crashed and the wind would ramp up and down, and it was something like a train. I've been in wisconsin storms and they are vicious but they are almost always over after 20 minutes; the peak of this storm lasted a good 12 hours. In the end 70% of the trees in the area have been knocked down and most people living under thatched roofs are no longer living under thatched roofs. Luckily we were in a solid brick building, so I wasn't really scared, but it was in a way sickening to hear that destruction keep going and going and going..

I think the most amazing part about it was that nobody prepared - nobody seemed to care. I asked people, "Are you aware that they are predicting 130 km/h sustained winds with gusts to at least 150 km/h?" They responded "Ohhhh it's fine, we get storms here a lot". Ok. Well, they didn't even bother taking down the hanging plants. It's sooooooooo bizarre here, it's like using logic has no gravity here, NO sense of emergency preparation. "As you wish!" And then of course it happened, and everyone is in this state of alert, and what a shame it is, and it was so bad, and it wasn't what we expected.. I'm not sure what they expected; it was a fucking hurricane. And as expected, a lot of stuff got broken. A lot of my neighbors houses that I couldn't see before were revealed overnight - almost the entire garden, including trees, was chopped or uprooted.

So below are a few photos of the event. But since it is a rural area it's hard to understand the level - more damage was done in the villages around but I didn't make the trip there to see.

The first is a photo of what I was looking at for 12 hours: a curtain held down by a chair. The light is our LED flashlight - there was no power so all I saw was flapping and all I heard was howling and crashing. (I also took some video - in fact I even tried running outside with the VX, but then when glass was shattering again I ran back in and decided it wasn't worth it.. but I got some good clips I think, to be posted someday..)

The second is the backyard as the storm was calming I guess friday morning. Still pouring. Missing a brick wall and what was a nice little jungle now thinned out a bit..

Next shot is out front where the road out was the day before.

Next is the main road - which was road-sized - now a path. We got there after it had been "cleared". And the dog in the pic adopted us for a good hour, a tiger colored dog, so sick, super sweet.

And the last the remains of what was a little forest..