A Double Whammy Hurricane

So, we're a month in to officially living in Hawai'i, and what better way to get welcomed to the state than by two hurricanes! Not one, but two! Earlier in the week the state started getting amped up for the possibility of two hurricanes hitting the islands. The first hurricane, Iselle, was forecast to hit the Big Island Thursday and Oahu on Friday. I spent the days leading up to the hurricane stocking up on water, canned goods, supplies for the cats, and toilet paper. Apparently during hurricanes you need a lot of toilet paper; I don't quite understand it, but everyone was buying it up! Water was hard to come by, too. I went to a few stores and couldn't find any. Finally while meandering through a Safeway store a worker brought out a flat cart filled with boxes of beverages. Only two of the cases were bottled water and I was able to grab one! But for the remainder of my shopping trip I feared for the security of my bottled water as people came up asking me where I found the water, and I was afraid someone was going to just come right up and take my cart! Fortunately I made it out of the store safely, and Will was able to get more water on his way back to Town from the North Shore where he had been that day. Will also purchased four five-gallon buckets for us to fill with water. This way in case we lost our water we would have some for pouring into the toilet to flush it or take a bucket shower. The final step was to tape up our windows. We have two large picture windows that posed a threat if they were to be blown out. By taping them, even if they broke, they would spider web rather than come shattering into our living room.

Here I am taping the windows. Aurora and I look a little nervous, don't you think?

After I taped the windows Thursday night we were all set, it was just a matter of riding out the storm. Pretty much the whole state shut down for the two days. I was dismissed from work early on Thursday and campus was closed on Friday. Even the shopping malls were closed on Friday. The storm was supposed to hit Oahu very early Friday morning. However, we woke up to an almost glorious day. Throughout the day there were a few big gusts of wind and a quick downpour, but that is all that we felt from the storm. Unfortunately the Big Island got hit quite hard and people in the district of Puna were without power and water, some for weeks, and are still recovering. The Big Island and its mountains did a good job of breaking up the storm, so it didn't bring much in the way of wind or rain to the neighboring islands.

The next hurricane headed our way, Julio, ended up going very far north of the islands, so there was no threat to us anymore from the second hurricane. Phew!

Preparing for a hurricane in a remote island is never something I thought I'd have to experience, and I'm so glad that we prepared for the worst, hoped for the best, and came through unharmed. However, now we are prepared for the next one with all our bottled water and buckets!