09-30-2003, 08:31 PM
Ok here is everything that I can remember that I have seen with hurricane Juan.
It hit Halifax straight on, the eye passed over the harbour between Darthmouth and Halifax. I live 22km North East of Halifax. I don't remember it being calm for long so I don't think the eye passed over me, but I do remember feeling the winds changing direction.
Reports are that it was a catagory 1, but some of the gusts were around 143km/hour that would put them in the catagory 3 range and there might have been some sustained winds of about 140km/hour.
I have lived in a mobile for most of my life. I have lived in the same spot for 22 years and I have NEVER felt the mobile shake like it did. I thought a few times it was gonna come off its blocking. I didn't DARE go near the windows, they were shaking pretty bad.
As some of you may or may not know, I have 7 birds. 4 cockatiels and 3 budgies. When the winds started I moved them away from the front room window where they are on a table to the hall way so that they would be more protected just incase something went threw the window. I was very proud of my little guys, they hardly made a sound all night, normally when there are high winds the freak out a little, even when covered.
Power went off at about 12:30 am (AST 11:30 EST)) my time. The winds had really picked up by then and the lights had dimmed at least 8 times.
From that point on till about 4 am, I heard lots of little clunks on the roof and down the side of the mobile. The mobile shook a lot. I have never been able to sleep very good in high winds so this was no different. 4 am rolled around not only was I very tired but the winds were dying down. I remember laying there in the dark thinking of my local friends and hoping they were ok. On the radio I had heard of a building collapse, roofs coming off and lots of damage.
I woke up about 2 hours later around 6 am. Sun was just coming up and there was hardly any wind at all. I had my shoes on all night because I had thought about all those peoples of people on the news walking around with no shoes on because they only had on slippers. I grabbed the flashlight and looked out the front window only to find a 3 inch think tree limb sitting there. There are no trees in my front yard. So now my mom is up and I go outside and check over the trailer and her car for any damage. Thankfully I never found any damage at all. Power was still off so I switched on the radio.
Out of 450,000 people 300,000 people lost power. I walked around the area looking for more damage but to my surprise there wasn't much (least not in my very local area). 2 doors down a huge 2 to 3 foot round tree in their backyard tipped over into the cable lines, roots and all.
Around Halifax its a different story...
2 people died because of trees falling onto their vehicles, one of them was an EMT on the job, his partner is now in the hospital recovering
An apartment building partly collapsed
Part of a hospital roof was ripped off
The harbour ferrie terminals were damaged
All buses, ferries and bridges are shut down (first time I ever remember that happening)
I have been told a warf and bar called Salties that were near the casino are now in the casino
100 year old trees in the public gardens have been uprooted, the whole gardens are a total mess
Hundreds, maybe thousands of trees around Halifax are down and along with them power wires
Everyone is told to say home unless you are essential personal. Most people stayed home but some idiots didn't
Some idiot on the radio said that Sackville (where I live) still had power and things were open, truth was only one street had power
Due to the above, all Halifax residents with cars decides to come out to get gas or goto the only Tim Hortons still open (freakin coffee freaks)
Due to the above, Sackville residents can't get anywhere, emergency workers can't get anywhere. Its total gridlock on the 3 main streets that finally got power back after many hours. Tim Horton works go nuts trying to fill cups of coffee freaks
Gas stations and stores in the Sackville area start putting rules up that you can only buy stuff if you are a resident of Sackville, police start to only allow people who are Sackville residents into Sackville
I get word that the apartment that was partly collapsed was the one that 2 of my friends lived in (one has a wife one has a girlfriend). They are all safe at the shelter. It didn't even clue into me that when it was mentioned on the radio that it was their building.
Around 8:30 I think power finally comes back on in my place. People around the community starts cheering. It was funny how people ran around yelling "power we finally have power". By this time I was worrying that everything in the freezers would go bad, I only had to throw out a few things. I would have cooked them up but had no BBQ and never thought of going around seeing if anyone locally would mind me cooking up the meat before it went bad.
I was able to get online for a few minutes to send messages out to friends about me still being alive and that relaxed a few people. Then power went out again for a few seconds and came right back on so I left my system off.
Later that night power flickered off again and then came right back on with a boom! But the power stayed on. On the other side of the park, a transformer blewup setting some trees on fire, but they were quickly put out.
I was mostly prepared for the hurricane. Had some battries, had (and still have) 18 liters of water (roughly 4.5 gallons of water) candles and a bathtub full of water that I never would have thought of if it wasn't for GRITS. She told me to fill it. If you don't know, a tub of water is not for drinking, but for flushing the toilet if all the water pumps are out.
We could have been better prepared for this but thanks to a life time of "there is a hurricane coming up but it will fizzle out into a tropical storm and just skim us" (which is almost aways did) we figured thats what it would do. We were wrong.
Oh and here is some more fun information, there is another storm that looks like it might come up my way and hit here around Sunday. They are saying that it could be stronger then Juan.
It hit Halifax straight on, the eye passed over the harbour between Darthmouth and Halifax. I live 22km North East of Halifax. I don't remember it being calm for long so I don't think the eye passed over me, but I do remember feeling the winds changing direction.
Reports are that it was a catagory 1, but some of the gusts were around 143km/hour that would put them in the catagory 3 range and there might have been some sustained winds of about 140km/hour.
I have lived in a mobile for most of my life. I have lived in the same spot for 22 years and I have NEVER felt the mobile shake like it did. I thought a few times it was gonna come off its blocking. I didn't DARE go near the windows, they were shaking pretty bad.
As some of you may or may not know, I have 7 birds. 4 cockatiels and 3 budgies. When the winds started I moved them away from the front room window where they are on a table to the hall way so that they would be more protected just incase something went threw the window. I was very proud of my little guys, they hardly made a sound all night, normally when there are high winds the freak out a little, even when covered.
Power went off at about 12:30 am (AST 11:30 EST)) my time. The winds had really picked up by then and the lights had dimmed at least 8 times.
From that point on till about 4 am, I heard lots of little clunks on the roof and down the side of the mobile. The mobile shook a lot. I have never been able to sleep very good in high winds so this was no different. 4 am rolled around not only was I very tired but the winds were dying down. I remember laying there in the dark thinking of my local friends and hoping they were ok. On the radio I had heard of a building collapse, roofs coming off and lots of damage.
I woke up about 2 hours later around 6 am. Sun was just coming up and there was hardly any wind at all. I had my shoes on all night because I had thought about all those peoples of people on the news walking around with no shoes on because they only had on slippers. I grabbed the flashlight and looked out the front window only to find a 3 inch think tree limb sitting there. There are no trees in my front yard. So now my mom is up and I go outside and check over the trailer and her car for any damage. Thankfully I never found any damage at all. Power was still off so I switched on the radio.
Out of 450,000 people 300,000 people lost power. I walked around the area looking for more damage but to my surprise there wasn't much (least not in my very local area). 2 doors down a huge 2 to 3 foot round tree in their backyard tipped over into the cable lines, roots and all.
Around Halifax its a different story...
2 people died because of trees falling onto their vehicles, one of them was an EMT on the job, his partner is now in the hospital recovering
An apartment building partly collapsed
Part of a hospital roof was ripped off
The harbour ferrie terminals were damaged
All buses, ferries and bridges are shut down (first time I ever remember that happening)
I have been told a warf and bar called Salties that were near the casino are now in the casino
100 year old trees in the public gardens have been uprooted, the whole gardens are a total mess
Hundreds, maybe thousands of trees around Halifax are down and along with them power wires
Everyone is told to say home unless you are essential personal. Most people stayed home but some idiots didn't
Some idiot on the radio said that Sackville (where I live) still had power and things were open, truth was only one street had power
Due to the above, all Halifax residents with cars decides to come out to get gas or goto the only Tim Hortons still open (freakin coffee freaks)
Due to the above, Sackville residents can't get anywhere, emergency workers can't get anywhere. Its total gridlock on the 3 main streets that finally got power back after many hours. Tim Horton works go nuts trying to fill cups of coffee freaks
Gas stations and stores in the Sackville area start putting rules up that you can only buy stuff if you are a resident of Sackville, police start to only allow people who are Sackville residents into Sackville
I get word that the apartment that was partly collapsed was the one that 2 of my friends lived in (one has a wife one has a girlfriend). They are all safe at the shelter. It didn't even clue into me that when it was mentioned on the radio that it was their building.
Around 8:30 I think power finally comes back on in my place. People around the community starts cheering. It was funny how people ran around yelling "power we finally have power". By this time I was worrying that everything in the freezers would go bad, I only had to throw out a few things. I would have cooked them up but had no BBQ and never thought of going around seeing if anyone locally would mind me cooking up the meat before it went bad.
I was able to get online for a few minutes to send messages out to friends about me still being alive and that relaxed a few people. Then power went out again for a few seconds and came right back on so I left my system off.
Later that night power flickered off again and then came right back on with a boom! But the power stayed on. On the other side of the park, a transformer blewup setting some trees on fire, but they were quickly put out.
I was mostly prepared for the hurricane. Had some battries, had (and still have) 18 liters of water (roughly 4.5 gallons of water) candles and a bathtub full of water that I never would have thought of if it wasn't for GRITS. She told me to fill it. If you don't know, a tub of water is not for drinking, but for flushing the toilet if all the water pumps are out.
We could have been better prepared for this but thanks to a life time of "there is a hurricane coming up but it will fizzle out into a tropical storm and just skim us" (which is almost aways did) we figured thats what it would do. We were wrong.
Oh and here is some more fun information, there is another storm that looks like it might come up my way and hit here around Sunday. They are saying that it could be stronger then Juan.