time for prayers, serious prayers

As I prepare the blog on Wednesday night, the news of the Category 3 Hurricane Irene is bad. Very bad. And it won’t hit our home island until Thursday. It is scheduled to be a Category 4 by that time.

Irene started south of the Abacos. Here’s the report from Acklin’s Island Wednesday night, from the Nassau Tribune –

11:11pm – Devastating news coming out of Acklins. Hurricane Irene is still pounding that southern island with 90 – 100 mile an hour sustained winds and NEMA has gotten reports that 90% of the Lovely Bay settlement “is gone.”
Homes have been completely washed away or have lost entire roofs, power lines have been downed and trees are blocking roads. Many more residents have sought safety in shelters on that island. Acklins residents have had no power since yesterday and some residents there fear that due to the extensive damage to the BEC infrastructure it could be a while before electricity is restored.
Even with all this damage already reported, Acklins still has a while to go before Irene is out of their area.

Devastating seems almost an understatement.

Here’s Irene as of Wednesday night around midnight EST. Or EDT. Whatever it is over there.

Do you believe it? She is larger than Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. And she really REALLY needs to blow EAST. Very EAST. Out into the ocean, where she can’t hurt anyone.

Please, if you’re the praying sort, pray for the Bahamas. Pray for the people who have almost nothing, those who have to eek out a living very dependent on tourism (which will be on hold for a while), for my friends who have a house on the beach, for Rudi and I who cancelled the hurricane insurance this year (it is horrifically expensive), for the farms, the animals, the Haitians who live in the bush on a good day and in squalor on a bad day… Irene really needs to move east.

The electric company has cut all power to the Abacos. No, they didn’t have to – the winds are 30kts right now and people need their air conditioning when it is hot and humid, they need their freezers to not destroy their meats, but the electric company is kind of weird sometimes. Not everyone has a generator. Most people don’t have a generator. They’re sitting in dark houses tonight listening to the wind gain momentum, wondering how they will fare.

The last big hurricanes tore the Abacos to shreds. We’ve heard there wasn’t one green anything, anywhere. It took six weeks to get telephones and internet working. It took six weeks to get electricity. It took six weeks for things to feel even slightly normal.

That means that – we won’t hear anything. The only way we can find out what has happened to our home, and the homes of our friends, is to fly down there. I’d send Rudi – he’s great with a chainsaw and word is they might need a lot of muscle.

I ramble. I worry. I imagine the scenarios. I hope that Brigitte reads this on Friday morning and that she sends a note telling us that all is well, it is over, it was nothing, that Irene headed out to sea.

In the meantime, I’d be grateful if you joined me in a prayer or two. Hourly would be fine.
EAST! EAST! EAST!
Thank you!

~ by photokunstler on 25 August 2011.