This will be the first in a series recounting my experiences during Hurricane Ivan on the Caribbean island nation of Grenada. I am back-dating the posts the the dates that they actually happened for archival accuracy. Hopefully this isn't too confusing for readers or news aggregators…

Our first official weather warning was [1] this email… However, the school's advertising that it was the only Caribbean medical school far enough south not to be affected by hurricanes seemed to have people brainwashed that noone took the warning seriously. Some first term professors continued to lecture, not letting their students prepare, or even preparing themselves. Personally, I was in the Bourne lecture hall, scouring the internet for any information, and watching the Weather Channel on the big screen. TWC proved to be utterly useless, as their reporting was focused on North America only and when Ivan would hit Florida. They did mention Grenada once, but the weathercaster could not identify it or any of the other islands that Ivan would totally destroy.

Finally, I decided that the update email that the University promised was never coming, so I went to get my car and drove to the supermarket. Never being in a hurricane before, I figured having some drinking water may be a good idea if somehow the tap became non-potable. When I got to the supermarket, it was mobbed. Store clerks couldn't keep up with the demand… as soon as they placed the bottles of water on the shelf, it was gone. (Why were they bothering to put it on the shelf anyway?) Then it was waiting an hour in a line that reached from the back to the front of the store to check out. Next, I went off to the hardware store to buy some caulking, as I had a hole in one of my walls for the air-conditioner that leaked during the last tropical storm. (On a side note, my caulking job was about the only thing that held, more on that later.)

I headed home, turned on the TV with the cable that had been installed only a week ago, in desperate search of any news of when the hurricane was coming. One of my friends even called to ask if the hurricane had missed us, since everything was so eerily calm. Turns out I didn't need the Weather Channel to tell me when Ivan was coming - he announced himself.