Preparing for Patricia

Hurricane Patricia was on her way to us and murmurs of her arrival started about Tuesday last week.  Admittedly, were  nonchalant about her in the beginning.   This year marks our 7th Hurricane Season in the Bahia de Banderas.  Each season begins with a storm whose name starts with the letter A, and they work their way down the alphabet to the last storm of the season.  Not all named storms turn into hurricanes.  We are far from "seasoned" but "P" is the 16th letter of the alphabet, meaning that this year alone, 15 storms had already formed, with the potential to turn into a hurricane and 15 storms had passed us by.

By Thursday, however, the murmur had turned into enough talk to cause us to take precautionary measures around the house.  Basically, this meant stripping our walls, inside and out, of any and all decor and hauling all our outdoor furniture into indoor shelter and locking it up.  We also put a couple of days worth of food and water in the room with the smallest windows, thereby limiting our exposure to flying glass, should the storm be strong enough to break windows.

Kevin reads the news daily on his computer.  I am not a big watcher of news, preferring to worry about what is going on in my backyard "now" rather than being concerned about what is happening everywhere else in the world.  News of Patricias' impending arrival, however, was unavoidable!  She was everywhere and would soon be in my back yard.   Countless friends, in person, by phone, email and on Facebook brought reality crashing down upon me.   Something hugely frightening was headed our way.

So, I took a second look at what we had on hand.  Really, under normal circumstances, as with most Canadian households, we could easily survive for several days on just what was in our fridge.  But,  if the power went out, all that would quickly spoil and we would be forced to live for who knows how long on half a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.

Which is why Friday morning found us scrambling to get more last minute stuff taken care of.  Kevin got into line at the gas station to top up the tank and then went to the water store for an additional 20 litres of water.  I went to Chedraui for extra candles and packages of ready to eat tuna and beans.  Ever the optimist, I also bought some deli meats because even if we did loose power, the food could be transferred to coolers.

The line at the gas station was bad enough, but much quicker than the line at the grocery store.  The clerks were doing their best but when everyone in the bay decides to stock up at the same time, things do slow down.  For the most part, in spite of the crush, people were considerate, polite and in good humour and the hour I stood in line waiting to pay passed without incident.

We came home and started the BBQ, because the chicken we had planned to have for dinner still needed to be cooked.    While that was happening, on the advice of friends, I did a few last minute things I never would've thought of:  pet food, briquets, matches and personal documents were all put into zip lock baggies and stowed for safe keeping.  In all, we felt we were as prepared as we could be so we waited.

As predicted, Patricia, a category 5 Hurricane hit land south of the Sierra Madre mountains and did a lot of damage.   Mexican authorities managed to ignore all the CNN hype and concentrated their evacuation efforts in the areas where National Hurricane Centre (NOA) was predicting landfall.  They nailed it, and it is my understanding that no lives were lost in spite of (for me) unimaginable damage.  

As the photos show, the devastation wrought by Patricia was nothing that I could have prepared for.  If asked to evacuate, we may have gone to the shelter set up at the university, or we may have driven to Guadalajara.  For the future, we will remember that evacuating to Guadalajara may be a poor choice.  There are videos on line showing floodwaters pushing loaded busses down the street.

All that water has to go somewhere and within 24 hours it had travelled down the Ameca River and arrived here.  When we cross the bridge, the Ameca normally takes an eye blink to pass.  A friend sent a video Saturday, and it took a  full 2 minutes to cross the flooded area.  Jarretaderas was evacuated on Saturday,  but people were back in their homes on Sunday.  Again, a masterful job by civil authorities doing what needed to be done when it needed doing.


The good people of Vallarta and area are very aware of just how lucky we were with this storm and have rallied like no one else can rally to provide food and water and volunteers to the centres who need help as they start cleanup from the storm.    Our local Starbucks is the drop point in Nuevo for donations of food and water and there are several on line sites where monetary donations have also been made.   The positive from this is that our community as a whole has rallied to help with the aftermath,  which can only be a good thing.

Many thanks to Mary Pitrowsky and Stephy Finch along with AF News? for photos used in this blog.