Journal | When the wind blows...

We just emerged from three days of darkness. 

Photo by J. Luca from https://midnightdrivein.blogspot.com/

It started with the wind. 

On Friday, the 15th, the sky went dark with clouds that harbingered a storm. It started early in the afternoon, but later, something shifted... I first noticed it at around a quarter to four, when I looked outside my windows. The threes were out of control. 

It was the wind. We've been having strong winds for a week, but this time it was different. A proper wind storm, blowing faster and harder than ever before, pushing trees and billboards and everything else on its way. The sky turned brown with dust. We could hear the coconuts falling on the backyard and suddenly, the electricity went down. We had to close the metal shades to protect the glass on the windows, and for about thirty minutes, even the mobile internet network failed and there was no tether between us and the world. 

The wind didn't last long, though. It spiraled away shortly after arriving, and after the wind, came the rain. The lights didn't come back. Hours later, we dined by candle light, and that night, we went to bed in complete darkness. Darkness and silence. 

On Saturday, we spent the day waiting for things to go back to normal, but the damage was much more extensive than any of us thought at first. There were fallen trees all over the city. One of them on my street, just a few feet away from our front door. It was a tall tree, five or six metres tall, I suppose, hanging over the street supported by the electric cables. A block down the road there was a palm tree in similar condition, but this time, it pushed the cables all the way to the pavement. On the square nearby, one of the trees fell, blocking half the street. The main avenue was completely blocked, for the exact same reason. 

The lights didn't come back that day... Nor for most of the following day... Actually, it was only in the early evening, this Sunday that electricity came back, and with it, the internet, albeit, not in its fastest by any means. 

I suppose I am glad everything is back to normal, more or less... There were practical concerns to keep in mind. We lost all the food in the fridge instance. And with batteries in all our phones long gone, ordering take out was a hassle. There's also people in the city who were worse off, many of them without water, in addition to everything else. Not to mention the accidents that happened during the storm, with trees falling over cars and house... 

I have to say, however, I didn't miss electricity when it was gone... I don't mean I am ready to go back in time and live in a cave, I mean I didn't have the comforts provided by electricity for nearly three days, and I was fine... Brother and I got to do stuff we don't usually make time for otherwise, such as reading aloud, by candlelight, to each other, like Tolkien and the inklings did... And I got a bit of a mental break, from stressing about all the things I have to do, all of which necessitate a functioning internet connection... It was nice... Despite the circumstances. 

This tree was uprooted by the wind, and the electric cables were the only thing keeping it from falling on the pavement, obstructing the whole street

Close-up of the tree hanging on the cables. It remained like that for 48 hours

This team was fixing the internet, after another crew cut down most of the tree trunk

In the background you can see a huge tree obstructing half the street

Some trees were split in half

This one crushed a car. There were several incidents like this.

By sunday there were several crews cleaning up the mess and working to restore power, but it took them a long time...

More than 250 trees fell all over the city, it was a proper storm... And this is part of the natural life cycle of trees... They hardly ever die of old age...