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Chapter five

Good to be alive

Hurricane Irene blew over Nevis and screamed away to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Before the hurricane, Nevis had been a green island, with lots of palm trees and fields of pineapples.

After the hurricane, the island was brown. All the palm trees growing along the beaches, along the roads, and on the hills had been blown away by the wind.

The marina was no longer there, and any boat left in the water had been smashed to pieces. All the houses in the coastal areas had been destroyed.

A pineapple farmer, hurrying to check his fields, found that all his pineapples had been washed away by the storm wave. He also found a ten-meter boat lying in one of his fields.

It was 500 meters from the sea.

On Fig Tree Hill, it was impossible to drive along the roads. There were palm trees in the roads, and cars and buses and big trucks were lying on their sides.

There were roofs of buildings that had blown off, broken glass everywhere, and all kinds of things which had been blown out of people’s houses - beds, tables, chairs - and everything wet and dirty.

Many houses did not have roofs, and the wind had blown the walls away from others. There was no electricity on the island, and there was no water. All the telephone lines were down.

It was impossible for people to call for an ambulance, and anyway it was impossible for ambulances to use the roads. People climbed slowly over things in the road, hoping to find something useful to rebuild their homes.

Some people searched buildings for lost family, shouting their names. Others went into stores and tried to take as much food and as many things as they could steal. People slowly began to count the dead.

In the apartment building at the top of the hill, Rick and Elaine were standing in the babies’ room. They were tired, hungry, and dirty, but they were alive.

The room they were standing in was empty. The wind had blown everything out of it. There was glass all over the floor, and the walls and carpet were wet and dirty.

The babies’ beds, their cupboards, the little chairs and the prettily painted table, the flowered curtains, and the colorful pictures were all gone.

The living room was full of broken furniture, and in the kitchen every plate and cup had been broken. Rick and Elaine stood hand-in-hand looking at what was left of their beautiful home. The babies lay sleeping in a towel in the bathroom.

Elaine looked at Rick and kissed him hard on the nose. “Honey, I love you so much!”

He picked her up in his arms. Together they danced round the room. It was good to be alive.

That evening, all the American newspapers had a front page story about the hurricane:

CUBA HIT BY WORST STORM IN 50 YEARS

Hurricane Irene, one of the largest storms ever to hit the Caribbean, cut through Cuba early this morning. About 200,000 people have left their homes.

Tourists also had to leave their hotels in Varadero beach before the worst winds arrived.

Irene is a category four hurricane with winds of up to 274 kilometers an hour. Weather forecasters are saying that Irene is now heading for the southern tip of Florida, which is under a hurricane warning.

Forty- five thousand people have left the Florida Keys over the last two days and air ambulances have lifted a hundred patients from two hospitals.