| Cayman
Islands - Hurricane Ivan |
| Part
1 - 10/09/2004 till 13/09/2004 |
(Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger image)
Friday the 10th, calm day at George Town Harbour. Everyone on the Island preparing for the hurricanne... |
... |
Harbour Drive. Buildings getting boarded up. Few cars on the road. Most people already at home waiting. |
George Town Museum. Notice the Hurricane warning flags, two red flags with a black square in each. |
Harbour Drive towards my office. Harbour to the left. |
Mike outside our flat. Being boarded up. |
...relaxing inside... |
...finished boarding up. |
Looking for a beer Friday afternoon... everyone locked up. |
Saturday afternoon. Local broadcast showing satelite image of Ivan moving through Carribean. 3rd red dot down, directly below Cuba is Cayman Islands. The Island is about the size of the dot itself. |
Saturday early evening at the beach... nothing yet... |
Back at the flat preparing Tequila sunrise. The last hurricane we 'suffered' I slept through, and as a result were not really mentally prepared for what was coming... |
Last TV image before power was cut. All they could broadcast was a camera facing a computer screen, with a pop-up ad obscuring the hurricane! |
Fitfull sleep during the night as storm got closer. This is looking out of the small window in our front door, at Chris' Jeep and towards Cyrus and Christie's flat in the background - 7:20am Sunday morning |
Sea water surging in and level starting to rise as winds start picking up. The estimated sustained winds were at 175 mph (280kph) with gusts up to 200mph (320kph). Video of this morning is below. |
Roof on the second floor blown off and rain water starting to pour through the ceiling. |
Mike sitting in the guest toilet under the staircase... |
...sitting next to Mike... |
We didn't venture out of the toilet much as the wind sounded like a jet engine even in the lounge... we half expected the walls to cave in at one point. Watching the water level rise. |
Made it to our far neighbours by breaking through two adjoining walls... |
Looking out of door window at the cars. 11:00 am |
Hole we broke through to get to neighbour's flat. |
Few hours later, winds started dropping. We went to visit Cyrus and Christie at their flat. They had built what amounts to 'bomb shelter' out of their TV cabinet to ride out the worst of the storm. |
Sunday afternoon at Cyrus and Christie's - first chance to relax. |
A few of us who lived in the same complex were offered refuge in a neighbouring house. This is a photo looking at the back of Cyrus and Christie's building minus roof. |
Winds still strong... looking around the neighbourhood. Water level still high. |
...still not safe to be outside... |
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Sunday night. About 15 of us sleeping in someone's lounge. Wind still gusting badly. Couldn't get anywhere else on the Island as it was still storming outside and impossible to drive anywhere. |
Monday morning. Winds have dropped enough for us to safely walk around outside. What you see is most of the roof from Cyrus and Christie's building... |
...what was left of their lounge... |
...Mel's bedroom... |
...upstairs toilet... |
...Cyrus and Christie's bedroom, notice a glass of red wine on the bedside table that survived the last 48 hours! |
Staircase looking upstairs... |
Water starting to receed... |
...notice my car's roof. It had been blown off and bent over the bonnet. I had to bend it back over the roof. |
Our lounge... |
Looking from our toilet through the adjacent flat into the far one, where we spent Monday morning. |
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Sunday
morning NOTE: You can only view as a Quicktme movie. File is also quite big, aprox. 10MB Download Quicktime here |
Go to Ivan 2 |