Thirty Years Ago on the Beach - #3 Gilbert prep begins

Learning what this meant became the number one priority. The Villas staff was busy making the necessary preparations for the property. What did we need to do?

All the utilities, both water and electricity would go down, but that was no big deal. They were down for the most part anyway. Figuring that most restaurant employees will be busy dealing with their own preparations, there would be no relying on the local restaurants for food today. The bars would be closed. We will be needing food and booze. That made sense. We felt smart and congratulated ourselves for our ingenuity. But the store is not open! Will it open?

It was still early, the winds were just beginning to pick up. It was a few hours until Gilbert was scheduled to hit Kingston. The cook suggested we go to the store and pick up supplies to get us through the next few days. So much for feeling smart.

Mentioning the store isn't open, she assured us they would be. Thinking this may be a wasted gesture, we agreed. We located the groundsman and we all went off to the store by the roundabout.

The store was open as promised and packed with scrambling tourists, apparently everyone had the same idea. The shelves were barren but this wasn't anything new. There was never much of a selection anyway. We did our best to get whatever canned food, pasta and pasta sauce we could find as well as a good amount of bully beef and cheese at the direction of the cook. We would need to pay more attention to her suggestions in the future. Adding to the food we stocked up on beer, drinks, bread and rum. We felt we had done a great job shopping and shot back to the villas.

Arriving back, we began scanning the radio stations for the latest. Information seemed imperative at this point. Even IRIE FM had gone to an all news format so we felt we were on the right track. The PM had addressed the nation and reassured no one. He had not found out about the hurricane much earlier than we had.

The weather was degrading rapidly with periods of gusty wind and light rain beginning to form into a noticeable pattern. While at the store, the groundsman had tried to locate plywood to cover the windows to no avail. We hadn't even thought about the windows. Apparently this storm was a bigger deal than we imagined.

Kingston was already getting strong winds according to IRIE. Roofs were starting to tear off and the zinc sheets would fly through the air. This was beginning to make us a bit concerned.

We went outside to check the sea, and it was already starting to churn, producing a novelty in Negril, surfable waves! We thought it would be cool to find a surfboard, but Negril being Negril, there was never a use for a surfboard. Since the idea of surfing was a non starter, we decided to break into the beers. We had heard of hurricane parties.

The beers helped to remove the remaining edge to the hangovers, it seemed breakfast was in order. The cook had been busy making up some scrambled eggs. It hit the spot!

It was now about 9am, most of the radio announcers began losing it. Since they were all located on the eastern end of the island, they were already feeling really heavy winds and rain. Some of the stations had already gone off the air. We changed to the most informative station just in time to catch their last radio broadcast stating that "Kingston has been destro....."

Parts 2 and 1
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