A personal post-hurricane Beryl account from Mount Pleasant on Bequia
Story and photos by Peter Roren
For two nail-biting days, hurricane Beryl had kept an easterly beeline course straight toward Bequia. I had been anxiously following the rotating monster on my computer screen hoping for a miracle, hoping that the beast would change course and go north. That’s what they usually do, and why nobody on the island can recall ever being directly hit by a hurricane, although hurricane Janet in 1955 battered Bequia pretty severely.
When Beryl was only a few hundred miles due east of Bequia, when it seemed obvious that the powerful center of a category 4 hurricane would slam into us, something unusual happened. For some reason, the system deviated a few degrees to the south instead of north, enough to generate a few degrees of optimism. The storm had changed its mind and was now heading straight for the island of Carriacou instead of Bequia. Opinions vary as to why the storm took a more southerly direction, some scientific and some not scientific at all. Whatever the reason, that small shift would prove to be good news for those of us in the northern part of the Grenadines; we might be out of the path of the most powerful winds, but for the small island communities farther south the deviation would have disastrous consequences.
We were already experiencing gale force winds when the electricity expired, taking the internet with it. All I could do was anxiously light a candle and hope for the best. In the good old days, I would have had the option of picking up my boat’s hook and fleeing; as a landlubber I was grounded with a house and garden. The claims among self-proclaimed meteorologists on how strong the wind was on Bequia vary from 110 to 130 miles per hour, depending on where these “experts” were bunkered down and what kind of measuring device (if any!) they were using. I myself own a hand-held anemometer, but common sense prevailed; I certainly wasn’t going to wander outside the safety of my bunker to measure the speed of ferocious and fast-moving winds that contained all sorts of flying stuff. Even with my hearing disability, the screaming wind was loud enough to make an 80-year-old geezer realize he had no business venturing outdoors; I weigh only about 165 pounds and am slightly unsteady on my feet during normal conditions. Trying to stand upright during a hurricane to measure the wind during a category 4 hurricane would be foolhardy to say the least!
The topography of Bequia varies a lot. My property at Mount Pleasant consists of a geodesic dome house and two small wooden cottages. Built in a valley depression and surrounded by a forest of dense cedar trees, the property offers shelter from east, north or westerly winds. However, it’s situated on the edge of a cliff overlooking the southern Grenadines, and, at 300 feet above sea level, there’s not much you can do other than remove your hat when a powerful wind comes from the south.
It was bad news coming out of the southern Grenadines once details began to trickle through the islands, very bad indeed. They, instead of Bequia, had suffered the worst imaginable, with category 4 winds attacking from all directions as Beryl’s eye passed slowly over them. I once experienced being in the middle of a hurricane’s eye and can only describe the phenomenon as a sudden breathing hole in a moving hell, a hole of optimism with calm seas and clear skies followed by the whole of inhumanity in reverse. For those on Bequia, a mere 30 nautical miles from the eye’s path, the wind was slightly less powerful. Beryl caused a lot of damage here, but nothing compared to the horrendous damage inflicted on Mayreau, Union and Carriacou.
I was optimistic; I had essentials such as food, beer, rum and cigarettes, all due to the fact that there was hardly any hoarding before Beryl arrived. It’s not the culture here to plan or hoard when a disaster is approaching, the exception being candles. There were none left in the shops, but the drip-free Chinese candles aren’t very good anyway. They only last about half an hour and leave behind a flat pool of wax the size of a dinner plate! Surprisingly enough there was no demand for batteries, loads of them remained on the shelves. Understandable, I suppose, when everyone has a flashlight built into their smartphones …. torches, Walkmans, Gameboys and transistor radios are now history.
As for my property: Despite my Norwegian Atheist Society membership I reckon I really must have a guardian angel. Large, heavy branches with diameters up to 12 inches were ripped from my huge cedars. They crash-landed with a few inches of clearance between my three wooden buildings, for which I am exceedingly grateful. The dome is a self-bearing structure made up of hexagons and pentagons which split into triangles. This makes it a strong design without the problems inherent in conventional techniques, and it adapts well with Mother Nature’s various issues such as earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. Therefore, the dome is as good as when it was built 20 years ago, but parts of the roof on the cupola look-out tower have taken flight elsewhere, along with my orange, lime and grapefruit trees. It took three hours of painstaking chopping with a cutlass to clear a way to the dome’s entrance but, apart from the garden, there’s nothing that cannot be fixed in a jiffy. It makes me feel miserable, though — I see no point in replanting; by the time new trees come to harvest I myself will have been recycled, but the good news is that my devastated fig-banana grove will come back next year.
My friendly feral cat Pusini disappeared when Beryl was upgraded from a category 3 hurricane to a cat 4, so I figure cats must have some form of built-in early warning. He obviously found a safe place to ride out the storm, because he was beside his food bowl the following day. My beautiful Japanese koi and the ever-hungry tilapia are doing well, and the pond is of course filled to the brim with water. The flooded curved dam resembled a miniature Niagara Falls when the sky opened up. I’m amazed that the fish didn’t go over the edge; they were smart enough to seek shelter in the deep where they would be clear of the turbulent maelstrom. I suspect other animals on Bequia weren’t as fortunate — it doesn’t smell too good along the road from Mount Pleasant to the harbor, and I suspect the aroma originates from dead sheep or goats that perished in the hurricane.
I don’t have cable TV, neither a radio with which to listen to local news let alone news from the outside world. There’s an FM radio in my old Suzuki, but, like so many other things in my car, it doesn’t work. I had no idea how other people were coping, and in some ways found this state of affairs refreshing, like I had gone back to the past when life was simpler. It made me wonder how long I could exist without switches which, with a flick of a finger, I could conjure movies, lights, a telephone connection, running water, a shower and the New York Philharmonic at full volume inside my dome.
I was thankful when the supermarket re-opened only three days after the storm, with working freezers full of superb refrozen chicken breasts, wings and thighs. My shopping basket, filled with rum, cigarettes and canned, processed Danish pork, was my post-hurricane salvation.
Rendezvous, the first (and only) bar to re-open for business, was packed with a loud, beer-thirsty clientele, all now hanging out minus smartphones; people were able to talk with each other without distractions from phones, and without having to scream over deafening music to be heard. “De music dead mon, no current, and sorry but de Guinness warm.” No problem! For the first time in a long time I could switch on my hearing aid, communicate, and enjoy a social hour at Rendezvous, even if the rum and coke was lukewarm. It was wonderful to see children playing hopscotch and skipping rope on the street, long-ago activities brought back to life because of an extended power cut. I asked one little girl who had taught her how to hopscotch, and she pointed to a broken window where an old woman, the little girl’s “tantie,” nodded to me with a toothless smile.
Normality was creeping back, albeit slightly altered. Half-way down the gutter toward the sea I found my missing overhead tank, along with my emptied garbage bin and half of an electric piano. I have no idea where the piano came from; perhaps I’ll find out some day.
It takes time and daylight to make repairs and tidy up the mess outside. I have electric light, and a large library for the long tropical nights. I read two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, realizing after ten pages that I had read them before — just one of the advantages to growing old! However, the books helped to pass the time while waiting for Netflix to be re-established.
Fourteen days after Beryl, life in my Mount Pleasant world is almost back to normal, but such is not the case for everyone, especially for the 52 displaced people now living at the emergency shelter in Port Elizabeth. There will be a long replace-and-heal period for many who have lost homes, possessions and loved ones.
Part II of Peter Roren’s account of Hurricane Beryl, and its effect on his home island and neighboring islands, will be published in October Compass. Roren is the author of a memoir, The Art of Getting Wrecked, of which our reviewer (Nicola Cornwell, Caribbean Compass April 2020) said: “This part-Norwegian, part English, mostly crazy (in a good way) author has a real-life story to tell that totally justifies the oft-used adage ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’ leaving the reader (me in this instance) muttering, ‘Blimey, you can’t make this s**t up!’ ”
