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THE HURRICANE KEITH DIARIES OF SR. RIC
A HURRICANE DIARY OF KEITH:
Part 1. (Sept 30 - Oct
1, 2000)
3PM Saturday:
Keith is 110 mi. off the coast, due west of Corozal, “moving WNW at 15
mph.” It doesn’t look like
it’s moving at all. On TV, it
looks like we’re getting hammered. The clouds on the infrared display envelop us, and they
report “winds to 90” but here
it’s totally quiet with an occasional drizzle of rain.
Note: Corozal is on the
western shore of the bay, about 30 miles from the Caribbean sea coast. To hit us, Keith will have to cross the spit of
Ambergris Caye and the bay.
6PM Saturday:
Keith is 140 mi. from the coast, due west of Corozal, “moving WNW at 3
MPH.” Actually, it’s
stationary, but the circle of clouds has gotten larger, and the eye is more
obvious. “Winds to 100” which
makes it a Category 2 storm, and the map shows we’re enveloped by the storm,
but it’s still windless and the drizzle is hardly noticeable on our tin roof.
People in the neighborhood are preparing by nailing up plywood over
windows. We’re eating bean dip and homemade chips.
9PM Saturday.
Our neighbors get in a truck and go off to Mary Hill School, a nearby
shelter. There’s still no wind, virtually no rain.
I think they’re caught up in the adventure of it.
12Midnight Saturday.
“Winds to 110.” Planes are flying thru the storm to give this reading, but we
still have only about a 10mph breeze. It
starts to rain hard enough that we can hear it on the roof; a light rain, maybe
half inch per hour. On the Weather
Channel, the storm is bigger, stationary to the east of us.
All of the other channels on the cable are dark.
2AM Sunday. “Winds to
120,” they report—Keith is now Category 3. Our westerly winds have escalated
to 20, although I would expect them to be northerly, since the well defined
stationary eye of the storm is 130 miles east of us.
The rain is picking up a little, but it’s still not a downpour.
(I would estimate an inch an hour.)
The weather channel just went out.
3AM Sunday.
Weather Channel back on. Keith
is 110 miles west of us, now Category 4, with “Winds to 135” and
“torrential downpours along the Yucatan Coast.”
Chetumal will probably report flooding, since an inch of rain turns the
city into a river, but here, it’s back down to a drizzle and a breeze.
6AM Sunday.
Keith is not moving! The
Weather Channel reports are monotonously similar, describing torrential rains.
We have a drizzle, and no wind at all.
9AM Sunday.
I go out prowling in the Scout. One
store is open down town, and it is doing a land office business.
(Brad suggests that some land may be going for rock bottom prices because
it is under water.) Actually, the
streets are muddy, but empty, because half the town has moved to higher ground.
Belize Radio is predicting dire consequences, and most are reacting to
that. We move some documents
and musical instruments to the upstairs room in the bachhaus.
10AM Sunday.
We have a big brunch: A
Kings Chef specialty called a “breakfast thing”– cheeseburger on a bun,
industrial strength hash browns, all covered with Green Chili. [After all, we
have to keep up our strength.] We
watch the weather. Keith is
starting to move SOUTH, slowly. It
must really be clobbering San Pedro. The
radio says that the airport at Ladyville is measuring 55 mph winds.
10:30. It starts to rain really hard – probably 2 inches an hour
– and blow in gusts to 40. The
wind is blowing out the pilot on the hot water heater.
(Now that is a major catastrophe! Good
thing we all took a shower last night!)
11:00. The rain stops and the wind picks up.
11:05. The rain starts again. And
stops again. Fortunately.
If it rained steadily for several hours at 2” per hour, we’d swamp.
1:30PM Sunday.
It has stopped raining, but our house is pretty much surrounded by water,
and the shower is flooded. My sump
pump, located in Elvis’ yard, will drain his yard but not mine.
I put in a little (1 gallon / minute) pump and started pumping out our
yard. It may take days, unless it
starts raining again, in which case the pump can’t keep up.
However, we’re several inches away from having a flooded house.
The “torrential rains” which the Weather Channel guys keep mentioning
are not happening here, nor are there any serious winds.
Occasional gusts to 50 or 55, no big deal.
3PM Sunday.
Keith is about “55 miles from Chetumal” which would be 55 miles or so
from us. It is calm, with a
little persistent sprinkle of rain and a 10mph wind which blows the sprinkle in
our back door whenever we open it. We
are fine, but more or less bored. Wondering
how to drain the lawn.
I will mail this, just to update
you. Watch for part 2.
A HURRICANE DIARY OF KEITH:
Part 2. (Oct
1-3, 2K)
3PM Sunday: The shower and
the lawn are flooded and it’s obvious that the big ol’ sump pump I put in to
pump out Elvis’ place won’t help me. (I
thought his lot was lower – turns out mine is the lowest on the block!)
I get out my old hydroponics pump – a tiny “Little Giant” – and
hook it up and start pumping water over to the Charro across the road.
(A Charro is a drainage ditch.)
The flow is a trickle, and when it starts to rain again at about an inch
per hour, it’s obvious that we can’t keep up.
4PM Sunday:
It quits raining, and I decide to add a booster pump (thanks to Jim
North). Brad and I run around,
hooking it in the line, hiding it in the hot-water heater shed, checking it out, finding a kink in the line, discovering that we
don’t have to go across the road, and eventually, we are pumping about three
gallons a minute off the property. It
starts raining again – probably about 4 gallons a minute. <grin>
No shower tonight.
6PM Sunday:
It gets dark, starts to blow and rain a lot.
The Weather Channel shows that the storm has swung around and is heading
inland, missing us entirely. It is
down to Category 2 – about 115 mph. However,
we are getting more wind and rain than we’ve gotten any time before.
(go figure) We eat a big
meal of fish, fried plantains, rice & steamed carrots, and settle down to
drink a little, tell some lies, and watch the Weather Channel, since that’s
the only thing on.
9PM Off to bed.
It’s raining softly, with occasional roof rattling periods which last
for a few minutes. The wind is not
severe – some gusts which rattle the loose zinc on the carport.
(One of the support crosspoles broke under the weight of the water.
1:30AM Wind has stopped;
rain continues with a drizzle and occasional downpours of a minute or so.
I watch the storm on the Weather Channel and try to pick up a picture off
the web. The line quality has
degraded so much that I can’t stay on long enuf to download,
(The BTL server modem disconnects me if the line quality is bad.)
Water in the splices, I think.
3 AM. The pump seems to be keeping up with the rain.
I can tell because the level of water in the shower is still constant,
even tho it has probably rained at least two inches since we installed the pump.
It is still raining fairly steadily, probably half an inch an hour.
6AM. Monday.
Brad comes in from the trailer to tell me that radio LUV-FM (the best
station for news) reports “No
School Today” since all the schools are being used as shelters.
It has quit raining, and the level in the shower is starting to go down.
The storm has moved south, the eye is a little east of San Pedro and Caye
Caulker.
8AM. We listen to LUV. The
radio folks get thru to Caye Caulker; many thatch houses gone on the back row,
front row is pretty much intact. No injuries or casualties.
No word from San Pedro.
9AM. Rain a little, stop a little.
Big breakfast: Breakfast
burritos (homade burritos by Christina) smothered with green chili.
12 Noon. Rain a little, stop a little.
The Scout won’t start. I
think the wiring has given out. I’m
so disgusted I take a nap.
6 PM Monday.
Keith, double-parked outside of San Pedro for 24 hours, has moved in
close to Belize City. The radio reports that BC has a foot and a half of water in
the streets, and its still raining. Keith
is down to 75 mph, barely a category 1, and is coming ashore north of BC.
(Sort of a wilderness area and a good place for it.)
I will guess that it will cross the Yucatan and emerge as a bigger storm
when it hits the Gulf of Compeche on the west side of the Yucatan.
We shall see. Just as long
as it stays down there!!
They have not sent everyone home
from the shelters yet, so we probably won’t have school tomorrow.
Even so, Brad is off Tuesdays, and I don’t have a class until 12:20, so
I have time to get the Scout fixed.
We have never heard anything from
San Pedro. I fear that it was
demolished. It was our one real
gringo magnet, a sort of mini-Cancun, and it will be sorely missed.
Caye Caulker, about 15 miles south, was hit, but not devastated – they
said that the “back row was pretty much leveled” – the back row is the row
away from the reef, with more substantial places on the front row.
Nobody hurt or killed. Mitch cleaned off the beach there, and I expect
that to have happened here. We
shall see.
9PM: The wind has shifted to Easterly, and is blowing steadily at
about 30mph with gusts to 50. A
phone message from San Pedro says “No Casualties” before the static cuts it
out. We are playing RummiKub when
Olga comes over and tells us that “they” are expecting a 5 to 6 foot surge
to hit Corozal and she is moving to the Clinic (high ground about a mile from
the bayshore) shouldn’t we leave? We
explain that we can escape to the bachhaus if water besieges us. Actually, a one to two-foot surge might be more likely, but
the level of the bay is down three or four feet, so I don’t think the surge
would broach the seawall.
10PM: We go to bed, listening to the wind howling through the
carport, and through our tightly closed louvers.
The temperature is down to 74, really chilly (!!) and we are sleeping
under our down comforter.
3AM Tuesday: A loose
“zinc” rattling and banging on the carport roof wakes me up. The pumps are howling because they are dry, so I turn them
off. The wind is howling, but seems
to be doing less than 40 mph, with some higher gusts. Keith – now a tropical depression with 50mph winds --
is heading northwest for Guatemala and
Mexico (across the land) leaving lots and lots of water in its wake.
It is about 45 miles away from us as the grackle flies. (In
fact, the grackles are having a hard time flying; the wind has blown off their
tail feathers.)
6:30AM Tuesday:
Our lawn is dry, littered with palm fronds from the palapa.
Winds about 30, a little misty sprinkle.
It is definitely cool and my ‘transition shirt’ from Scandia Woods
(thanks, Tricia) feels good. The
international airport at Ladyville is clear (open??) but the Belize River,
swollen from runoff from the west, laps at the edge of the runway.
Water is over the road between Ladyville and Belize City. The phones to
Ladyville are out.
I can only make an Internet
connection by throttling my modem down to 19,200. I can get these letters out, but a website update is out of
the question. I will work on it off
line, adding this diary. I have had
about 200 visitors since the start of Keith.
People are still in the shelters
since the National Emergency has not been officially ended, so I doubt if we
will have school. The shelters in
Belmopan are full of hungry people – that is becoming a problem of emergency
proportions. (A shelter in the
states would serve food, but they just don’t have money for that in this poor
little country.) However, some
businesses are donating basic food supplies, another demonstration of the basic
friendliness/helpfulness of Belizeans.
7AM: Brad’s house is in Sarteneja, (East of us about 15 miles
across the bay, on the way to Bacalar Chico and the Reef) and we finally hear
that there were no casualties, no property damage there. There are 22 Sartenejan fishing boats stuck in the mud at the mouth
of the harbor in Bleece, and a busload of fishermen from Sarteneja is on its way
to clean up the mess and hopefully salvage their boats, but the roads are so bad
that they may not get there for a while. Bleece
is definitely a mess, but then, I think it usually is a mess, and this is just a
different kind of mess. Think of
hurricanes as “urban renewal” for Belize City.
The wind here has died to about
15mph, a real calm compared to the night.
We are listening to the radio, thinking about pancakes, eggs, and hot
maple syrup for breakfast. Not
paradise right now, but not too bad. The
radio is filled with personal messages asking about people (“please call”)
and assuring others that someone is all right; something that wouldn’t happen
in the US (violates FCC regs) but here just yet another demonstration of
Belizean humanity.
It’s sprinkling a little, as I
start the Scout. Another day in
paradise.
Over & out,
Sr. ric
Copyright Sr_Ric, 2000
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