As a Vital Voices Global Partnership GROW Fellow, I have started on a journey to understand myself better as part of advancing my business and leadership skills. One of the first activities under the programme asked us to reflect on major events in our lives that shaped our world view and our ‘driving force’. I immediately thought about experiencing Hurricane Gilbert as a little girl living with my parents, three sisters and dogs while living in a ranch style house set in a large garden with two large Guango (Saaman) trees in College Common on the University campus. Here is a summary that I had tweeted on the 30th anniversary of this devastating storm:
Hurricane Gilbert started making direct landfall in Jamaica at about 9:00 am on Monday 12th September 1988 as a strong Category 3 system. It’s 15 mile/25 km wide eye tracked the entire length of the island from Morant Point in the east to Negril in the West.
I remember the special prayers at church on the Sunday and being very excited at the prospect of a storm. My sisters and I had never experienced a hurricane and we found the preparations, especially the snack buying, fun. I don’t remember any ply board being bought and put up or any of the standard preparatory activities that we do now.
We woke up that Monday morning to no school, grey skies and heavy rain. Mom made breakfast while dad was busy with tools and stuff in the garage. I decided to take photos of the storms progress from an armchair by our living room window between rounds of board games. My photos were mainly of small trees in the garden bending in the wind and puddles on our lawn. As the morning wore on, the rain intensified, tree branches began to break off and some gusts of wind started to make that scary, threatening whistle. Oddly enough, I don’t remember watching TV or listening to the radio.
Then suddenly, the storm quieted, the rain stopped and the sky cleared like a normal day. My whole family went outside to examine the house and garden. We were even able to walk our street to chat with our neighbours. I shared my Encyclopedia gained knowledge of the eye of the storm with anyone who would listen. We were still outdoors when the clouds returned, this time they were darker, denser and far more ominous than before. Mom ushered us back inside and large drops of rain began again just as I took up my spot at the window again just as the rain started. Dad came in, saw me and said “move from that window”. I ignored him and continued photographing as the action outside got better.
The ‘other side’ of Gilbert so much worse than the 1st half. It was afternoon but everything got very dark very quickly. I leaned transfixed over the back of the armchair watching the hurricane return with great fury. “I SAID MOVE FROM THAT WINDOW!” My father’s voice and firm grip pulling me away surprised me. As I was about to protest and go back to my position, there was a loud pop and two ceiling tiles fell, landing right where I had been sitting. I stood in the dining room in shock as debris from the roof rained down inside the house.
After abandoning my photojournalism project, my sisters, our dogs, and I decided it was best to hide out in the passageway outside of the bedrooms. From there we peeked out to watch our parents at work in the living and dining room. Ceiling tiles on the windward side of the house had become soaked and were falling all over the place. The mess was one thing, but my attention was drawn to the now exposed wooden rafters and corrugated zinc sheets above us. It was later in the evening, when it felt like the battering would never end, that we ventured into the living room again. I kept glancing up as our roof creaked in the wind. I remember when my mom cried out and stood speechless while pointing out the window. We stood together and stared in awe. Our neighbours’ house, which was very similar to ours, was brightly lit. I remember wondering how it was possible for them to have electricity we ours had been cut off hours ago. Then I realised that their roof was curled up on top of their house, purlins flapping in the breeze. It was lightning that we were seeing through their windows. Within a minute, their roof was completely gone, floating away into the dark night. We girls started screaming, panicking and asking if the neighbours were alive. Before our parents could even respond, our own roof gave a big creak and lifted in the corner, right above our heads. It may have been very brief but I the horror of that moment replays in slow motion in my mind to this day: Standing inside my house and watching the roof lift with a shrieking gust of wind – rain and leaves blowing in and splattering my face – and then the structure settling back down on top of the living room wall.
My parents moved quickly, mom grabbing sheets from the linen closet and dad moving furniture. [I don’t recall being of any help whatsoever at this time.] Dad climbed up, wrapped the sheets around the exposed roof rafters and then tied them to the window grilles. He did this about 4 or 5 times with mom silently providing more and more sheets. Then she ran into the bathrooms and pulled down the shower curtains which they fashioned into chutes to channel the rainwater that was now bucketing down inside back out the windows. Then the whole family retreated to the leeward side of the house. Our bedrooms, however, had large glass windows so we huddled together in the corridor for the rest of the night.
I don’t think I slept at all because I remember when the battering of the winds began to subside just around daylight the next day. I have a clear memory of tip toeing through the ankle-deep water in my bedroom to peek outside through broken glass panes. It was like a movie scene.
Except for the huge Guango (Samaan) trees, trees of every size in our garden were all broken and uprooted. I could now see all the way down the street and most of our neighbours’ houses had been transformed overnight into roofless shells – walls speckled with leaves. I ventured into our flooded living room where I found that even though there was significant damage, the wet sheets tied to the window grille had managed to hold our roof in place through the worst of the storm. Outside, I saw our neighbours (phew!) picking through the remains of their home. Thank goodness they were alive. Most of the large pink Poui trees that had lined College Common lay across the street tangled in downed electric wires.
I don’t remember the other details, but I know it was days if not weeks before men arrived with chainsaws to clear the roads. We stayed home, playing board games and eating tinned meals for months. My sisters and I sliced up Vienna sausages and taught ourselves how to eat them with chopsticks. We played Trivial Pursuit until we knew the answers to every question. My parents would walk to UWI to make phone calls. We eventually had to move out for the house to be repaired and we didn’t go back to school until just a little before Christmas.
My mom and dad truly became my heroes during and after Hurricane Gilbert. I’m also certain that the experience also influenced my fascination with weather which led me to develop my CaribWatch disaster response mobile application in the 2010s. Above all else though, it is where my love of buildings began: From how those rafters were put together and then came apart, to the way that little house protected us through the night and extent to which we can design in response to the power of nature. All of my university and working years have been dedicated to understanding the built environment and my business, Lucea Caribbean Ltd. is the current manifestation of how I plan to lead the way to a better, more resilient future by design.
