Fighting Against Mother Nature Isn’t Easy…
Sept. 15
Preparing For A Visitor
Today, I got up a little earlier than usual. I have no idea what time, so I just got ready to go to school. I’m always “half-dead” in the morning, so I didn’t know what was going on until my father said I didn’t have to go to school. I just said “Great, I’ll go back to bed-“, but before I could even do that, my father told me why school was canceled in four simple words… “a storm’s a brewin'”. Needless to say, another hurricane was coming. This time, her name was Marilyn a level 1 (later 2) hurricane, and I think her boyfriend “Luis” got her upset!
My father was boarding up the house while I got ready to go shopping. And around 10 am, we went to Plaza Extra to get a few things for the weather that was coming. When we got there, though, we were not the only ones with that in mind! Like ants over a candy bar, hundreds was there. Some stay cool, while others panic. After what seem like hours in long lines, we finally got out and went home.
Being clean is a Yarde’s thing, so we cleaned up, washed up and packed up everything. After all that, I went to bed and tried to get some sleep. I hope that Marilyn would give me a break. What can a level 2 storm do anyway?
Sept. 16
2:30 am
Facing a Living Nightmare
My father woke me up around 2:30 in the morning. He asked me to get out of the room because the winds were blowing hard. Even thought the winds that were pushing against the window and making a unpleasent sound, it didn’t brother me. But after a heavy gust blew hard against my window, it made me think twice, so I ran ran out of the room! A few moments later, I went back into my room to survey what was going on there. The floor was completely wet, but the roof was still up and in place as usual. My father and I then was getting ready to go into my brother’s room, but before we even get there, I heard a very LOUD noise. “What was THAT?”, I asked. My father ran to the end of the hallway and I followed. There was my answer, a board was loose from the doorway and we saw a very angry wind entering the house!
My father was determined NOT to let Marilyn rip our house apart(No woman had chased him out before, why stop now?). But I warned him that we should leave it and head for cover. Instead, he told me about what could happen if we didn’t try to cover it. My father’s dreams will go down in the drain, we’ll have no place to live, and worse of all, since at the time we have no money, it would take another three years to rebuild the house. So without complaining, I took a flashlight and help him out.
Together, we put back the board (my father boarded the doorway from the inside) back up against the 110 m.p.h. winds. I pushed hard against the board while my father nailed it down. The wind kept pushing me off balance and I was losing my footing, but my father’s words encourage me to keep it still. In ten minutes, we managed to nail down the board, or so we thought. Just when we were about to leave, the bottom and the top board blew off! While the top board landed hard on our heads, the bottom board send us in two different directions. My father fell to the ground while I was literally thrown across the room, hit the wall, and fell head first on the ground. I was dizzy when my father tried to get me up, but I managed to shake much off it of.
But instead of giving up, my father pushed the bottom board back to the doorway and with a long rod, he held it down. Then I lean against the board while he tried to find more nails. During that time I could see everything outside. The cables were beginning tossed like a ball and the telephone pole was ready “to get down”. Every now and then, the wind would try to overcome me, but it failed. But standing against the wind was rough. Within ten minutes, my father found the nails, but I was too tried and my muscles was about to give in. While I tried to pray and gained confidence and strength to hold on, my father tried repeated attempts to nailed down the board, failing each time because it was dark and the flashlights were dying. After he ran out of nails, he sat next to me and held down the rod and told me not to give in. But I was shaken and weak. My mind was in focus, but I was very close to the insanity point and I started to say, “God, don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! I didn’t do anything wrong!”. After a half hour of pushing, struggling, and praying, my father finally gave up. He told me to stay there while he moved the spare windows from the room. Knowing that I was on the edge of losing my grip and maybe my life, he worked fast.
During that time, I thought about my life. I thought about my brothers, my sister, my friends, and my enemies. I thought about the times my mother hugged me, my father telling everyone about his first and greatest son, my sister saying “cool” every time I came up with an very good idea and my friends telling me that I was the most unique and interesting person in the world. And then I saw my life pass before my eyes. I saw the people I loved. I saw the good times, and the bad times. And finally, I saw Death, getting ready to check his list. After that, I heard “Get outta here!”, and I ran.
All of a sudden, I was back in reality and the board fell behind me. But my knee was hurting and it caused me to fall down. My father picked me up from the ground and I hopped to the safety of the hallway. I went into my brother’s bedroom and got a new flashlight. Then I hopped to the bathroom to aid my painful left knee. Then my father and I went to open up all the room doors in the house. By doing so, the winds won’t be able to blow down the wall.
And then it began. The place where we was, the soon to be kitchen, was being ripped, part by part. And then our soon to be living room suffered the same fate. The roof of those two rooms began to tear off. And Marilyn knocked down everything within those two rooms. I hopped into my brother’s bedroom. My father was there, but my brothers’ not. “Where they go,” I asked my father. He pointed to the closet door. I got my brothers out of the closet and all of us went on the bed and with the bedroom door left opened. The wind howled and seemed to be laughing at us. We wer right there, scared, pacining and everything until I cried and prayed to sleep…
7:00 am???
After the Nightmare…
I woke up around 6 or 7 o’clock (I’m not sure. My watch stopped. But it was still ticking.). The roof was still above my head! Along with my family, I prayed to God and thanked him for letting us live. After that I went around the house. Nothing much was damaged except the two rooms I saw a few hours ago. The rest of the rooms were okay too. I put on my shoes and stepped outside. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I saw roofs all over the neighborhood (I live on a hill, so I have a overview of everything). But I did see people too. There were hugging, laughing and crying. My father started up the generator to get electricity for our house. I went to take a nice, cold bath. And I prepared myself for the horror stories and the unexpected…
Oct. 3
Three Weeks After…
Well, I ‘m glad to say that my family and I are okay. And I’m also glad to say that everyone that I ever cared about is okay too. We are recovering slowly, but surely. At the time, I’m not attending school due to some minor but dangerous damage. While I’m still cleaning up the school and getting my life back together, I’m working as an intern for COBEX International. In the future, I will try to be more careful around mother nature.
I hope yoy enjoyed my story. I will be putting up more, so watch this page for the latest…
Last revised: October 10, 1995
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