Leaving the safety of home

by Ross Sheil

Friday, September 17, 2004

When leaving the safety of home at 8:00 am on Monday morning we had not previously been able to see further than our windows.

We had listened to the same hurricane warning radio announcement had been broadcast for almost 48 hours.

We had no electricity, no water and no contact with anyone outside our home. We had watched parts of our roof blow up, attempted to mop up our flooding floors (up and downstairs) and watched the neighbouring runway become a river.

Leaving the house we could see what a mess the city had become.

Cayman Net News publisher Desmond Seales picked us up in his 4x4 from our home on Crewe Road.

“I have never seen so many people in Cayman,” he remarked as he steered eastwards on Crewe Road.

The Cayman Islands residents had lost their comforts. We now had the same living conditions (in varying conditions of bad) and needed a wash.
We drove to house of Dr the Hon Frank McField, Minister of Community Services, Youth, Sports and Gender Affairs. He had been stranded in his house, and stood marooned in Cayman Islands Olympic sports clothing.

People were still gathering themselves; Dr McField like the rest of us knew no news and he had not been equipped with a radio by Government.

At IMP's storage two shaken guard dogs stood guard. Surrounding them, shipping containers were tipped, thrown and bent, all across the road. Everywhere, everything and everyone had been hit.

Mariners Cove was the worst hit, with the hurricane shifting the whole seaside development onto the road.

A woman very calmly told people that they were standing in her kitchen – the tiled floor was all that stood.

The neighbouring Ocean Club development stood but barely and the sea was visible through one home, which had a semi-circle cut out of it as if someone had taken a giant buzz saw to the property. It is impossible to describe the impact the hurricane caused to the seafront.

The airport's runway had drained of floodwaters but planes lay broken on the runway, and even upside down. Island Air's hanger had been torn open.

The Cayman Islands has no running water, no electricity, food is scarce and our air-conditioned SUVs are running out of fuel.

We were a small nation that attracted the world's wealth and wanted for nothing. Today we can understand what other countries experience in times of national emergency and the change it will bring to our daily lives.

There is an old seaman's saying that "worse things happen at sea", but this is our home.

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