Hurricane alley

By Natalie Miller
210 west Content Editor [send email]

Isabel, she was my first.

I was excited, then nervous, then exhilarated then bored then relieved. That’s been my week, folks.

Last weekend when Isabel was declared at Category 5 Hurricane, people here in Tidewater Virginia, that’s all the areas on the Chesapeake Bay, started to flip out – mainly because we were due for a Big One. Since moving to Virginia, living near the ocean rather than on Lake Erie is something I’ve had to adjust to. There’s more seafood to try, people go fishing every weekend, and no matter what their trade, they know a lot about the tides and boating and crabpots.

And in the case of the hurricane, some people were pragmatic and some were panicked. Many people locally recalled the Ice Storm of ’98 and Hurricane Floyd, even Hurricane Camille of ’69. So most people knew what to expect and started pruning tree limbs and getting gas for their generators. Monday there were lines for bread and ice at all of the grocery stores, and toilet paper was flying off the shelves. Tuesday my boss told me I could leave to get gas or buy batteries or get things in order. All I did was get some snacks for me and Dan and the dogs, plus some batteries for our clock radio. Wednesday at work was a bit of a wash-out – we logged off our computers and put them on our desks covered with plastic, and went home for the afternoon to brace for the storm.

I taped up all four sets of windows in my apartment with duct tape, long before anyone in the complex did. And we filled our bathtub with water, not for drinking, but for flushing the toilet if the water went out. That was something new to me completely as a concept – that you could still flush with no running water.

We watched the news and waited, Wednesday night was uneventful. When I got up the next morning, it was gray and rainy outside, but didn’t look too bad. Dan and I set about rearranging our spare room, a project we’d been meaning to do for a while. Just after we finished putting the furniture in place, we lost our power – it was about 1 in the afternoon, so we still had some daylight. But I was surprised we had lost it so soon, since Isabel wasn’t supposed to arrive for a few hours yet.

But when she did, there were thrashing trees outside and loud wind and torrential rain. It was good to be watching from inside. My dogs looked alarmed at the noise, and probably wondered why the heck we didn’t turn the lights on. So we played checkers by candlelight after a supper of garlic bread and tea – being stuck inside wasn’t working up much of an appetite. The solitude of our apartment was really getting to me, so we went to see what our neighbors were up to.

They had crammed about 8 people into their living room for a lively get-together of college-era drinking games. (The obvious impetus? Got to drink the beer before it gets warm!) Their apartment and their style of dealing with the storm differed from ours, in that we had “battened down the hatches” and they had opened all the windows and doors for ventilation. (Numerous fan jokes were told, such as “Why don’t we turn on a fan?”)

And, although I hung out with these neighbors occasionally, this was a very interesting camaraderie that night – as Gabe wisely said to someone who was complaining about the game of cards taking a long time “We ain’t going anywhere, everything’s closed, so chill out!” One of the lessons of the hurricane is that you can’t go anywhere, so deal with where you are and what your situation is.

Another thing that became apparent after the storm was that even when it was over, we still weren’t going anywhere. Our workplaces were closed, and nowhere had any power – not 7-11, not the streetlights, not the library, the bank or any stores. And everyone was trying to conserve gas. So, it was a chance to hang out with the neighbors outside in the parking lot courtyard, to get some things done around the house and read. Now, people are diehard when it comes to habits – I did it and lots of other people did too – turned on light switches, got ready to do the laundry, got out the vacuum or turned on the garbage disposal. Instead, I remembered that a broom works nearly as well on my all-hardwood floors, and that the laundry would have to wait.

One nice thing about the aftermath was that it makes you get a little creative – Dan and I got a picnic set in a backpack for our wedding, which is very fun, but we’d only used it once, so we cooked our food on our gas stove and took it outside. It was a fun thing that I doubt we’d think of doing most any other time… and that night the stars were amazingly clear to see because there were no lights.

So Day 3 with no power began to be a little much – Dan got to go into work at Colonial Williamsburg, because of course that’s one place that knows how to do things the old-fashioned way. I stayed home and worked on my book, a 1,000 pager about the history of Salisbury, England from ancient times until modern. So that was the right speed for the way things were going – it reminded me that electricity is a fairly recent invention. And I began to see that I was motivated to get up a little earlier to get stuff done rather than try to do it in the dark. Cooking by candlelight or flossing by flashlight can be tough. And that night everyone was back out in the parking lot, listening to their car stereos, drinking and carrying on. But we were ready for the lights to come back, the novelty was about to lose its luster.

And Sunday, I got to go drive through town. It was a bit of a shock because Virginia has beautiful wooded areas, shade and huge hundred year old trees. Unfortunately, that which is a blessing most times is a curse in a storm as bad as Isabel. I was on my way to church, and I was blocked by fallen trees and power lines at more than one route. And every tree that had fallen was huge, and brought many surrounding trees down with it. Some houses couldn’t be seen from the road anymore.

And when I got to church, it seemed like a country church with everyone bringing tales from their ends of town, reporting on how they had fared during the storm. The service was changed to let people speak about their experience and what they had learned and what they were grateful for. Some people said that they had learned something about their own resourcefulness, or realized how much water or electricity they had been wasting or how lucky we are that it wasn’t a worse storm.

There were some great stories of people pulling together, too, having a neighborhood grill party before the meat spoiled, and lending a hand with raking leaves and branches. Some people met their neighbors for the first time – I guess it’s something when people don’t have time to meet or talk until a disaster. I spent more time with my next door neighbors than I ever had, but found they’ll be moving out next month.

I had a great chat with a woman at the weekly farmer’s market about what had happened in her neighborhood and how to tell the freshest corn, but that was tempered by the poor people at Baskin-Robbins carting out their giant melted containers of 31 flavors to the dumpster. I also attended an art show at the community center. The weather after the hurricane was gorgeous and sunny, so the place was naturally well-lit. It was a great chance to appreciate beauty after the storm.

The loss of electricity is a reflection on how modern life has changed so much that we really feel a loss of our daily lives. Loss of power really is that – you’ve got to go back to the simpler ways of doing things – of communicating in person rather than by phone or email and entertaining yourself rather than sitting in front of your electronic medium of choice. The storm will change things around town, no doubt, because many of the great trees that keep this town beautiful will be absent. And many homes in the outlying areas have been flooded or crashed into by trees, so life has really changed for hundreds of people in just a few days.

When our power went back on Sunday, and it really made me more appreciative of simple things like traffic lights. Because although non-working lights are supposed to indicate a four-way stop, not many people seemed to follow that. The roads and intersections in the old town of Williamsburg are confusing enough with their one ways and yields, it was a little scary when people were left to their own driving devices.

So now I’m sitting at my computer at home, in the lamplight, writing about the past few days. I learned that you should follow advice from people who’ve been through this before, and get a full tank of gas and plenty of bottled water. Meet your neighbors whenever you can. Have fun when you can, despite the situation. There’s a silver lining to that dark cloud named Isabel.