Hurricane Season Sux!!!

At present have 3 storms coming our way. I hate hurricane season.

UPDATE: Well Jova passed us and the other two are fully downgraded. My prayers are for Texas and Louissiana and the mess Rita is gonna cause to them and to our nation. Oh, Lord we ask that you spare lives amidst this havoc.

When I was 11, hurricane Iwa hit. They sent us home from school early and my friend Maia and I went down to the beach to see the surf. The waves were huge and looked dangerous. That night my parents and I sat it out in our apartment building and played scrabble. I thought hurricanes were no big deal.

Until after we went outside and saw what it had done to the island. Kauai was hit the worst. Iwa had passed the islands then hooked back and wiped out Kauai. That was in 1982.

On Sept. 11, 1992, (what is with this date?) hurricane Iniki hit the islands. Iniki was one of the third most damaging hurricanes in US history. That was before Katrina of course.

This time, my home was on Kauai. We lived across the street from the beach. I was away at college when it hit. I didn't hear any news about my father for a week. Cell phones were rare in those days. I finally got a call from a guy in Maui, who had a list of people to call all over the place and tell them their family was safe.

My dad went to a shelter to sit out the storm. He said the roof blew off and everyone ended up cramped in a small room. It was the first time my father wrote me a letter, and it was 3 pages double sided. I think he wrote part of it during the storm.

In 2002, many people held their breath for the next hurricane. It never came. Kauai has prospered these last 13 years in tourism and really bounced back. Not everyone is doing well and business is seasonal, but still some I know are doing really well.

My fear isn't, so much, that Kauai would get hit again, but Oahu. While its horrible and people die, the people of Kauai can handle a hurricane way better than the people of Oahu. If a hurricane hit the city, I'd probably move to Kauai if I was gonna stay in Hawaii. If you gotta camp then you may as well be out of the city.

I checked the hurricane tracking page and the image above is our current status as of 9/19/05. I think Jova is gonna pass us by and weaken - hopefully. But as far as Kenneth and Max I really can't tell at present. Just gotta watch it.

Oh and stock up on water, and spam, which I hear the stores may be out of already.

Mmmmm Spam.
(Does that freak some of you out? Its a main staple here,spam and sticky rice, wrapped in seaweed. It's key to survival.)