I experienced my first full-fledged hurricane when Sandy hit Jamaica in October 2012. Jamaica was the first country hit by Sandy. It was also the first hurricane to directly hit Jamaica since Gilbert twenty-four years earlier.

After the news arrived that Sandy was headed towards Jamaica, my landlord started intensive preparations of the community compound, cutting off branches of every tree and turning what had been a leafy paradise into an almost barren wasteland. I complained, but he said it was absolutely necessary because the branches could be knocked off the trees and hurled through windows or roofs, causing great structural damage and hurting people as well. We rushed to the supermarket to prepare, and it was extremely crowded--even in a small storm, people overreacted because they are never sure what might happen. In Sandy, everyone knew it would be big.

In the end, we didn’t get the eye of the storm but instead got the tail. The eye is supposed to be the strongest, most destructive part, but nowadays this fact is not as clear as it was in the past because some feel the tail has more rain and wind and the eye has more rain but not as much wind. We’re fortunate in one sense, but we got a lot of wind. We basically hunkered down for three days and three nights.

When the storm was over, large numbers of trees and many power lines were snapped and destroyed. There was tremendous damage to houses from both wind and rain. About seventy percent of houses were left without power. All the airports were closed and there was a forty-eight-hour curfew imposed in Kingston in order to keep people from looting and prevent them from being on the streets where they might be harmed.

Even after three days, there was still a tremendous amount of water and there were gullies where you normally would drive down a little incline and through the gulley onto other side. Near Norbrook, there was a gully you had to pass near Cherry Gardens. After Sandy passed, I drove on that route and that gully had a huge amount of water pouring through. I didn’t even think about trying to drive through because there was so much water and so much force that it would knock even a very large car down and sweep it away.

I had to turn around and go back to the house and not go anywhere for another day or two. I could have driven the other way around, would have been a much longer trip. There were many cars on road. People were trying to get out of their houses after being cooped up for more than seventy-two hours. Even during the best of times, the roads in Kingston were filled with potholes and were not easy to maneuver. After the hurricane, there was so much water and even more damage to the roads. We found it prudent to stay home for another couple of days rather than risk it out on the road.