The Tribune

Last week’s hurricane warnings evoked memories of a previous destructive storm for Christopher Rabley, now living far away from the Bahamas.

I WOKE up on Saturday morning and, with a vacant mind, went through my usual routine, turned on the radio and listened to the news on NPR while I fixed myself a cup of tea and toast with marmalade.

An update on Hurricane Joaquin blared through the speaker and broke remnants of sleep, brought me to like a shot of caffeine. The storm had battered the Bahamas.

Early on Thursday, the government of the Bahamas had issued a hurricane warning for islands in the south west – Acklins, Crooked and Mayaguana. Joaquin was a major hurricane, a Category 4 with sustained winds of 130mph, and after sitting over the Bahamas, was finally moving away.

I gazed out of my kitchen window in Northern Westchester, just outside New York City, watched the much-needed rain drizzle and wondered how my friends who live on New Providence and Spanish Wells are doing.

My parents moved to the Bahamas after Dad responded to an advertisement in the local paper. “Go Overseas Young Man” the ad blared. For both my mother and my father, life in Britain had become routine and dreary. They were keen for adventure. On September 17, 1966, Mum, Dad along with my brother Peter and sister Anne, who were four and five at the time, boarded a Quantas flight bound for Nassau.

Dad had a job in Nassau with Barclays Bank. In 1968, my mother gave birth to me in Princess Margaret Hospital, a large building in downtown Nassau which at the time was painted pink. We lived just outside the capital until I was 10, when my parents moved back to England.

In Westchester I got in my car and tuned my radio back to the news; another update on Joaquin came through and memories surged back about the time I lived through Hurricane David in 1979.

When David first made landfall on the island of Dominica and its capital city, Roseau, its sustained wind was 150mph making it a Category 4 hurricane. It devastated the island, killing 56 people and rendered 75 per cent of the tiny 80,000 population homeless. The hurricane grew even stronger, to an imposing Category 5 with sustained winds of 175mph; then hit the Dominican Republic where it continued its onslaught, killing 2,000 people. The island’s Cordilla Central mountain range sapped David’s strength, weakened it to just below hurricane status, but as David aimed for the Bahamas it grew strong again, roared back up to hurricane status with sustained winds of 90mph.

“I could not see much outside, but I could hear the wind tear at the trees and whistle a thorny pitch through bowed screens; the roof whined as its edges scythed, the attic moaned, rain cracked against walls. It was nothing like a normal storm, even the heavy ones that come at the end of those hot summer days. Those storms were short. This one was more powerful and seemed like it would never stop.”

The house in which we lived in the Bahamas was simple; it was made out of cinder block save for the roof, which was wooden and had only a modest rise to help withstand hurricanes. The neighbourhood we lived in was “over the hill”. The hill near the shore served as the landmark and geographic and social demarcation. At that time, most people with money lived near the shore, or if you were extremely wealthy, Lyford Cay. Our house was located on the other side of the hill, inland, where the breeze was minimal and its residents middle class. Opposite the house was “the bush”, a sub-tropical, broad-leafed forest that extended a great distance: it was where I spent most of my time.

The fact that David was gaining strength again as it headed for the Bahamas greatly worried my parents. For two days they spent their entire time preparing for every eventuality they could think of. Earlier, Mum had filled both bathtubs and every bucket we had full of water. Parked in the driveway was the small boat that Dad had brought home from the boat basin. It sat on a trailer with the air let out of its tyres and weighed down by water poured into its hull. Anything that could be swept into the air by the wind either was fastened down or put away somewhere safe.

Our garden was like most in the Bahamas. It was full of beautiful trees, bushes and lots of Bahama grass. Along the edge of our garden against the side and back walls grew fruit trees, behind them were coconut palms. Dad had gathered all the coconuts from the ground and, as well, cut them down from the trees; in a bad hurricane coconuts fly through the air like balls shot from a cannon.

It was time to put up the shutters. I held stout nails that had a square body, one end tapered the other with a square head. Peter held the bottom of the shutter while Dad hammered nails through plywood into cinder block.

Eventually Mum and Dad thought they did everything they could to get ready. Inside the house was dark and hot, so we assembled in the patio. The roof of the house extended over the patio, sheltered a carpeted room and a five foot wall. Between the wall and the roof was a set of screen panels. My parents decided we should stay in the patio unless things got really bad, at which point we would go inside. By now, the wind had picked up and the sky was dark. The power went out.

We sat on the patio floor; Dad insisted we sit next to each other in a row with our backs against the wall. I looked at his face; it was stony, he stared intensely at the house. I could not see much outside, but I could hear the wind tear at the trees and whistle a thorny pitch through bowed screens; the roof whined as its edges scythed, the attic moaned, rain cracked against walls. It was nothing like a normal storm, even the heavy ones that come at the end of those hot summer days; violent and strong they would bend trees and sometimes rain hail.

However, those storms were short. This one was more powerful and seemed like it would never stop.

From outside a loud craaaack, boom jolted our bodies. Dad motioned for us to stay put. We all thought the same thing. Was it a tree that came down or a large branch, and if it was the latter should we brace for an impending crash against the house? Mum and Dad looked up over the screen into the garden. “It’s ok,” said Mum, “it’s far away.”

Missy and Timmy, our two ‘potcakes’, panicked. We had a hard time getting them to sit still to begin with, but now they jumped around in circles and barked. My parents, thinking this activity might be because they needed to use the bathroom, let them outside. As soon as Dad opened the door, they squeezed themselves between the door and the jam and bolted. We would not see them again until well after the hurricane had passed. I looked through the crack in the doorway; leaves shot past like green bullets. Then silence. Nothing. “We are in the eye, the eye of the hurricane,” I blurted.

The quiet was eerie. We went outside to investigate. My parents’ preparation had served us well. Everything was where it was supposed to be, except there was green everywhere. Trees, branches, leaves were scattered all around, it was like there was no longer a boundary between our garden, the road and the bush opposite – it was all the same.

Mum served us chicken soup from a giant pot she had resting on the gas stove. The hot broth felt good, made me feel relaxed. After a short while, the wind came back and the sky darkened once again. I curled up in my mother’s lap and fell asleep.

A few days later school reopened. As I walked up the long entrance, I could not believe my eyes. On either side, fields normally full of small rocks and dry, patchy grass that did its best to grow in sandy soil were green. In all the years I attended the school, I had never seen the fields like this before. The hurricane had drenched the grass and brought it to life.

“So this is what the grass is supposed to look like,” I thought.

I pulled up in my car outside my friend’s house in Stamford. Inside we would watch England versus Australia, a Rugby World Cup showdown. Although my mind would be elsewhere, in the Bahamas, wondering what it was like, hoping things were not too bad. One thing was clear: if Joaquin were to have hit Westchester, there is no doubt I would prefer to be in my old concrete, island house when it happened.

Christopher Rabley is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Passengers, which recounts the death of his mother, a well-known botanical artist, in the infamous crash of Singapore Airlines 006, and memories of his idyllic Bahamas childhood.