Subaqua Sternal Rubs

Hurricane Ivan needed no announcement — he announced himself. Winds started to pick up pretty quickly, and I foolishy texted this information to my parents, which worried them more than anything. I made a movie with my digital camera of these winds, and it can be seen here. These were just the "light" winds, before Ivan really got started. Suddenly, the power went out. Shortly thereafter, the roof of the shed in front of my house just blew off in one piece. At this point, I thought it was best to start taking some shelter, since my living room had a number of large windows that could shatter at any minute. Since my bathroom also had a window, I put a chair and sat behind a stack of boxes in the hallway. I spent two hours there, as the first part of the storm passed overhead.

Then the eye of Ivan reached Grenada - the eerie calm belied the hurricane's brute force, and only lasted for a few minutes. During this time, I crawled out of my shelter to inspect how my place had fared so far. Amazingly, nothing was broken, and the only damage was that some muddy water had leaked through the main door. Not realizing what was about to come, I foolishly grabbed a mop and tried to clean it up. Then I began to hear shouting, so I poked my head out the door to see how my neighbors were doing. As the wind was coming from the opposite side, I offered shelter in my place as it was definately safer than upstairs. My 4 neighbors and I spent the next 10 hours or so huddled in my bathroom:

This picture was taking early in the ordeal, so everyone is still smiling. Unfortuately, my camera's batteries also died after this, so I have no more pictures of Hurricane Ivan or the damage inflicted to the island and the people of Grenada.
Back to the hurricane - shortly after everyone moved into my place, the main windows blew out, spraying glass all over the living room. No one got hurt, as we were all in the bathroom at the time, however it did scare us slightly as the bathroom did have a window which could have sprayed glass all over us (but luckily didn't). Since it was raining quite heavily, and I lost my windows, the floor started flooding slightly, and we brought some chairs into the bathroom to stay off the wet floor. Despite this, one of the girls started getting wet from above. Upon inspection the ceiling was leaking from some new cracks… this had us slightly worried, as the structural integrity of our shelter had been called into question. In addition, we had the constant reminder that the roof had blown off the top apartments, as the heavy winds were taking the refridgerator upstairs and slamming it against walls. (It ended up in the living room.) All this stress caused some of my neighbors to need to use the bathroom for its intended purpose. Well, I guess in a hurricane which is potentially life-threating, social mores are slightly modified. Anyway, the next 10 hours were pretty much the same: wind, water, and refridgerator banging. The storm finally let up around 3 or 4 in the morning. My neighbors and I ventured out of our shelter and went to inspect the damage.

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