Saturday, September 5, 2009

Hurricane Jimena!






So I was going to include this post in the other one I just made, but figured i'd give it, its own post.
This weekend has been a new and interesting experience, rather exciting but scary as well. On thursday September 3rd Hurricane Jimena passed through the area of my city. school was canceled both thursday and friday allowing us to watch, explore and experience the storm full on. Through out the day I wrote notes and took pictures of what i saw.
My thursday started off with waking up at about 3:30 into the morning with my mom screaming, turned out there was a gas leak to caused a little fire and she was putting it out when she was screaming. the police came to check stuff out and make sure it was safe, and my dad got home from Tucson. After watching the rain for a bit we headed back to bed. The woke up again around 8:30 or so knowing there was no school! One of the first things i noticed was our room was a little wet. went down stairs and got some breakfast. Starting early in the morning and through out the whole entire day, the electricity went on and off, as well as the internet, phone service, and water supply (the water cut out in the middle of my shower). After breakfast my brother and i rain around in the rain and crazy wind for a bit and then came back to shower off and warm up. As the day went on the same problems continued and the rooms such as our room and the bathroom started flooding, so we were mopping them every once and a while. After a while My brother, dad and I all went on a search to find some bread. While driving through the rivers (streets) and lakes (parking lots) we couldn't find any place that was open. So we went back home for a while only to head out again to explore the destruction and go get some drinking water. Thats when I saw dozens of uprooted trees, flooded everything, stuck cars, destroyed walls and fences, destroyed taco stands (at one there was a guy cleaning stuff up in a boat). Fire fighters and police were rushing around. roads were some what destroyed, it was a mess. After a bit of driving around we saw that some of the OXXOs were open and went there to get some basics for the house, since they were come of the only places open, lines were forming out side them to bye stuff (as seen above).
The strong rain and wind lasted for around 24 hours straight, including the weaker rain and winds it lasted more around 35 hrs. But the sight of destruction didn't end there, in these few days after i have seen cars stuck in mud off the roads, brand new streets torn up, concrete walls completely taken down and a lot more. I saw all of this close to my house but we got lucky, where i live we didn't get the worse of it. how ever surrounding areas weren't that lucky. areas surrounding us got it worse than us, and we got some pretty big damage.
I'm glad i was able to experience a hurricane from a safe spot, if you want to see more photos check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickdykstra/ and if you want to here more about the hurricane just leave a comment with what you want and ill fill you in.
Best regards,
Nick Dykstra

1 comment:

  1. Wow, Nick, you sure are getting more of an experience with this trip than you were counting on! I'm glad you're OK and that your home and immediate area are not as bad as it might have been had the storm shifted just a little. Keep hanging in there at school and having fun with whatever comes your way -- you are building some amazing memories!

    ReplyDelete