When it hit me

When it finally hit me, we had been out shopping and I had bought a cold diet coke and been given two free bags of ice from a local supermarket. Everywhere we drove, there were trees and fences down, trees standing bare without their leaves, people out moving branches and devastation. I looked up the word, "Devastation" in the dictionary and it didn't seem to really portray what I meant. Synonyms for it include: noun destruction

• confusionstar
• desolationstar
• havocstar

• ravagesstar
• ruinstar
• defoliationstar

• demolitionstar
• depredationstar
• lossstar

• pillagestar
• plunderstar
• ruinationstar

• spoliationstar
• waste

That about sums it up. I went into my room and was silent, shedding a few tears for about an hour. I compared it to my losses of the past but they are all unique and pain can't be measured or compared. I no longer want to upload or take photos of the destruction the cyclone caused. 

As with others who go through trauma of any sort, it reminds us to appreciate what we have and to love the people who are in your life. We went to a friend's place to help them out and as they had a generator, I was able to have a hot shower and wash my hair. I told her later, it was the best gift anyone could give me.

A week later, we are still without power but we do have running water and as we have bottled gas, we can have hot showers at home. People around us have generators and at night, these are noisy but in the long run, it doesn't matter. The community are rallying around each other and offering support where they can, as it happens in most towns unified by a common traumatic event. There are stories of hope and unfortunately there are stories of scumbags. That is the world we live in. 

As with any trauma, it is important to keep moving forward, find the blessings that give hope and deal with it in your own time without feeling you have to succumb to a time line or force a smile on your face because someone said you should. Acknowledge your pain, have a cry if you need to but keep moving forward. Find a friend you trust and who loves you enough to give you that 'slap across the face' (not literally) if need be and then gives you a hug and chocolate and says, "I love you". Cry if you want to. Go out and move a few trees or branches from the yard. Run and burn off energy. Do what you need to do in order to get through to the other side of pain so you can live life again.

After the Cyclone - Part 3

The day after the cyclone was Wednesday and that night, there was a thunderstorm. We’re not talking about a thunderstorm where there’s a little bit of thunder and lightning, we’re talking about a thunderstorm that doesn’t stop for a few hours and lightning that keeps flashing as though someone had a spotlight and kept peering into our house.In fact, that night there was a metre of rain - that's 1,000 ml of rain!!! Most people think 100ml of rain is a lot! Milly retreated to her safe place in the laundry and coped less with the thunderstorm than she had with the cyclone. I must admit that I was ‘over’ everything when the thunderstorm arrived. It was as though, “Seriously?! We have to have more of this?!”

We woke up to rain, no water, no power, no phone, internet service but we heard that there was one supermarket out of 3 that was operational and headed down there, as did most of the town. The queues were aisles long and there wasn’t much in the way of water and long life milk for sale. We bought pears and apples and cold diet coke! Yay. I had been drinking water to that point because I don’t like warm coke but Andy has a caffeine addiction so had been drinking warm coke zero as well as water. We stopped in at Matt’s and he gave us a bag of ice which was gratefully received.

After we had unpacked the very few staples we had bought, we walked to Matt and Lauren’s as their road had become a main thoroughfare since the main road was blocked off due to fallen trees or road damage after the cyclone. I walked a bit behind Andy and was able to see the “Dog man walking” in action. He waved constantly to cars who were waving or tooting at him, big smiles on their faces! It was like watching Santa Clause in action. By the time we arrived at Matt’s, we were drenched in sweat. It was so hot and humid! I found out we had phone access and I texted the 20 or so people who had been trying to contact me and caught people up on Facebook, with a state we were in.

Someone who had been through cyclones up here before, said it was the worst they’d ever experienced. Someone else said that unless you’d been through it, you can not begin to understand what it was like. A friend messaged me and shared with me her feeling of despair and pain and when I offered to meet with her, she came immediately. We had a wonderful time of sharing stories and when she left, she reassured me she felt encouraged.

Andy came home after helping someone move tree stumps and wondered how I was coping. I reassured him that I was fine and although he smiled and said that was good, in his mind he was wondering when it would ‘hit me’. 

Cyclone Part 2

As darkness falls over the ‘wasteland’ for that is what it seems now in some respects, we feel as though we are shell shocked. From our home, we can see houses and roads that had been previously blocked off by trees and today we went for a little drive to get out of the house and to catch up with some friends. Roads were blocked by trees and at the end of our road, a tree has fallen on to powerlines. It gets darker and there are no street lights and only a few homes that have generator-run lights.

There are no man-made noises of TVs and every now and again, I hear a kookaburra laugh which surprises me but gives me hope. I sent Andy off to run with Milly up the street and burn off some energy. We went to visit some friends and they kindly gave me their phone so I could message Nathan and tell him how I was. It’s at times like this, that one misses their family and I asked him to message my dad and put an update on Facebook. I went around to another friend’s place and she showed me what family and friends had put on Facebook and that gave me a link to them too. She took a photo of Milly so that people could see Milly was doing OK. She has a generator so it was good to wash hands, flush a toilet and be given some cold water and food.

When we came home, there were warnings of a thunderstorm approaching. I took out my guitar to practise and keep toughening up my fingers on the steel strings. After playing the scales through E to G, 2 octaves and a bit, I practised a few chord changes. Playing minor chords was a reflection of my mood. The cyclone has been nerve-wracking. No phone or internet reminds me of how dependent I am on technology to keep in touch with my family so even though I don’t always talk with them every day, when I ‘can’t’ talk to them, I feel isolated apart from them.

I want to be reconnected to power and phone/internet. As I write this, the thunder rolls and aware that the battery on this is getting lower, I know I should cease my writing and wait until tomorrow. We are on school holidays a week early but in some ways, it’s not as liberating as it would have been next week. I suggested to Andy that we leave and go away now but we have no idea if we can get out. It’s highly unlikely due to floods and who know if there would be trees across the road and how far ‘away’ we could get. Should we be here anyway, until the power comes back on – which could be another week?!

So darkness has almost completely come but there aren’t any stars shining right now because of cloud cover. I’ve caught up with a few friends around here but I still wonder about how others are coping. When we were at Matt’s place, their 2-week old baby was sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of the stuff we are going through.

Morning will come and with it, we will see what the new day will bring.

My First Cyclone

The next few posts will be what I wrote during and after I experienced/survived my first cyclone. The cyclone was category 4 and unless you have been through one, you have no idea how it feels, despite what the photos and Wikipedia say. The aftermath, is one of devastation and although there are glimmers of hope to follow, there is the constant reminder of pain and loss all around. I did take photos and videos but at the moment, I am not comfortable about sharing them here. There's plenty to see on the internet.

Wed. 29^th March, 2017

11:00am

A few days before it happened, we got wind of the news that a cyclone was expected. Being a tropical cyclone area, we knew this was always a possibility but what it really meant, we had yet to learn. We spoke to people who had been through cyclones before and we stocked up on water -  both for waste and water for drinking, canned and packet food, torches and batteries. We bought a couple extra torches and I dug out the camping stove I bought five years ago but had never used. I bought some gas cartridges for that, too. We filled up the car with petrol and got cash out in case of emergency.

At times, the atmosphere was excitement, in the form of ‘adventure’ but there was a lot of apprehension and trepidation. This cyclone was expected to be a category 4 but we were assured houses were built to survive category 5 cyclones. At the supermarket a day or two before, the air was electric as it was on everyone’s mind and evidenced in everyone’s trolley. People made plans to stay with friends but we chose to stay home. One of my reasons for this was I would be too worried about what was happening at home to enjoy being at someone else’s place.

At church on Sunday, everyone was talking about it. I had been putting cyclone preparation advice on Facebook when I received it and a couple people acknowledged that had helped them. One young lady though, admitted she had not read it until after she had gone shopping and bought a freezer full of meat. Those who had meat, cooked it up and put it in the freezer which would defrost in time for meals. At the last minute, Andy and our friend Matt came and took down the blades of the outdoor roof fan as we had heard that they can fly off and gouge windows/walls in a cyclone.

Monday came and the fact it was a day off work/school was not uppermost in my mind. “Have we prepared enough?” we wondered, as the rains and winds began. I ‘smashed a bunny’ (chocolate) and continued to put cyclone news and clips of what was happening around home on Facebook. By about 10 that night, we lost power so we went to bed. Andy slept fitfully but I slept well, waking up only a few times. The banging was constant and loud, winds blew and rain fell but when we woke up the next morning, the roof was still on, windows were still in place and we still had some phone reception and access to Facebook to let people know we were OK.

According to the radio, the cyclone wasn’t expected to hit land until 1pm so we went and dozed fitfully and at 12 noon, all was calm. We deduced from that, we were in the ‘eye’ of the storm despite it apparently not having hit land by then. Andy took Milly out to do her business and we found out we no longer had phone/internet access. We turned on our battery operated radio for regular cyclone updates as the wind and rain picked up and came from the other direction.

I taught Andy how to play the board game ‘Sorry’, practiced my guitar again, listened to the radio and tried to sleep. Andy said the only things he would add to preparation in future was: he would get ice for the cooler and would take rubbish to the dump as rubbish was supposed to be collected Tuesday. It’s in our shed at the moment and will probably be quiet smelly by the time it gets out of there. Ewww.

It’s not really a sound sleep when you are in the middle of a cyclone. There is relentless banging, constant uncertainty as to whether it will get worse or whether damage to the house could still occur and then Andy discovered the windows on the right side of the house that were more ‘exposed’, were letting water in at the base of it. He put towels at the base of the 3 windows and regularly changed them to dry towels as we prepared for another night’s sleep.

The next day (Wednesday) there was less rain and the wind had died down a little. We looked out our loungeroom window and saw houses we had never seen before although we knew they had been there. Visibility had increased with the trees that had blown over. We had no running water now either. No power. No phone/internet. No water. There was a knock at the door and our friend Matt had turned up in his car to check up on us. He messaged my son Nathan for me and I asked Nathan in the message to put it on Facebook that we were OK. While Matt was here, our friends Dan and Mel, their daughter and our mutual friend Mel H, also turned up to check up on us. It was nice to have contact with others. Both of them spoke of drastic damage done around the area, trees across the roads, roofs off and radio announcements told people to stay put and not go ‘sightseeing’. Matt said there were people taking photos all over the place.

Just listening to the news at 11am it said we are still susceptible to experiencing damaging winds and flash floods in the area. Having the radio on gives some link to the outside world and provides a small amount of relief when feeling so isolated. When the radio is off, the sounds of the wind crashing, trees creaking and chainsaws being used are all that I can hear. (Or Milly licking herself) I have thoughts of wondering when it will all be over and ‘behind us’ and we’ll have power, water and communication with the outside world again. I told Andy last night that someone ought to turn the cyclone button off. I am quite thankful that I am not a pioneer.