hurricane floyd es

November 1999 Table of Contents

HURRICANE FLOYD - MY STORY
by Ebony Stanford

(Ebony is a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Abaco Central High School. She went through the Hurricane Floyd experience with her parents and younger sister in Dundas Town.)

It was about 9.30 on the night of 13th September when my family and I sat down to relax after preparing for Floyd. The winds had already started picking up and it began to rain. We were watching Titanic on tape when the power went off. It was midnight, so we decided to go to bed.

Tuesday morning when we woke, we observed that the winds had gotten stronger and the rain poured harder. Trees were blowing wildly, along with small pieces of debris. We all bathed, then caught some more water in 5-gallon bottles. Pressure was getting low, which we knew would lead to the water going off. When we had finished filling all the bottles we sat down and listened to 810 AM because Radio Abaco had been knocked off the air.

We were sitting on the floor of the master bedroom when someone noticed that there was a small leak in the roof. We didn't think much of it and put a bucket and some towels in the area where there was leakage. The rain grew stronger and so did the leakage. A big portion of the ceiling began to get wet. We panicked because we knew that if the sheet rock in the ceiling was wet long enough the whole thing would cave in. We began to look for things to hold the ceiling in place like nails, hammers and board. We were too late. The sheet rock ceiling fell on top of my parents' bed. The wind came in, bringing all sorts of debris. There were leaves everywhere. Rain also came in. The bed got wet, along with the computer and the computer stand. The rug was also soaking wet from all the rain that was blowing in.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought I was going to pass out. I went into the kitchen to get some water and noticed the ceiling in there was also leaking. We got the hammer nails and wood to prevent the kitchen ceiling from falling in. While my stepfather was standing on the stool trying to nail the wood up, I was standing underneath pushing the sheet rock with a broom while my mother was using the mop. When we had that part nailed so the sheet rock would not drop, another half of the ceiling fell in.

It was just no use. More breeze, dust, rain and debris came into the house. At this point the wind was so forceful from the master bedroom that it caused my closet to start creaking violently. My mother and I were so frightened we thought the wall that separates the closet from the master bedroom would collapse and everything in both rooms would be destroyed. We took action fast. My mother helped me and my little sister to move our clothes into the front room where there was no damage. We also managed to pry my mother's room door open so we could get some things out of there. We got clothing and other things like passports and birth certificates. When we had everything, we just stood in the front room. Everyone was standing and looking in shock. As I stood there I thought to myself what could go wrong now. Well, I found out what could go wrong.

All of a sudden there was a loud crack coming from our back porch area. I ran to see what had happened and in the process I fell down. When I reached the back porch I saw that half of the ceiling had blown off. It looked so terrifying I called my mother to come and have a look. When she reached the door the other half of the back porch ceiling went flying away. I was so scared I wanted to cry but I was trying to be brave for everybody else.

After all the tragedy that had taken place, I was thankful for the eye of the hurricane which allowed me to get a little rest. I was able to come out of the house and take a look around. I could see from just being in my area that we were getting hit really hard. There were warning on the radio telling everyone to stay indoors, so I went back inside. My family and I waited for Floyd to take out more vengeance and wrath on us. The second part of Floyd didn't give us any problems except we had a little flooding.

I was so grateful when Floyd died down and decided to give us a break. We had a lot of work to do. All the towels in the house were wet because we used them to soak up water. There were piles of leaves and big chunks of sheet rock lying around. It would take us days to clean up all of the mess.

Tuesday night my mother slept in my room because frogs were in her bedroom and she's afraid of frogs. On Wednesday we got up early to go and see what Floyd - that heartless bastard - had done. Everywhere we went we saw signs that Floyd had been there and left his trail of damage. Roofs were blown off homes and there was a lot of flooding.

Things started getting back to normal. I'm back in school now and we have our house all cleaned up. We received lots of water and food from our family in Nassau. In spite of Floyd and all the damage he did, I think Floyd did some good. People learned that material things are not everything and that we can lose all that we have in a split second, so we need to cherish what we have and be thankful.

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