Hurricane Beryl. What is there to say. It is Saturday morning and from around 6pm on Wednesday there has been no Digicel phone service. Or possibly no cell service at all.
There has been no news whatsoever. I took a stroll on Thursday to try and find reception, but no such luck. I did see hundreds of downed tree limbs and a few completely uprooted ones, which was a rather amazing sight.
The West End Road was passible, although one lane in many places due to the downed foliage.
The sea was beautiful, calm and blue as if nothing had occurred at all.
Arriving closer to town you could see the havoc that Beryl brought to the failing Negril infrastructure. A main utility pole next to Natural Mystic was broken just under the snake of dozens of wires and boxes and fuses and was laying in the street in a pothole filled with water. Well, that explained why we had no current on the West End.
Walking further towards town, another pole, right in front of the Green Store was broken in half, both halves resting in the sea.
The next pole south was leaning over the road at a 40 degree angle with wires placed nicely at neck height for those not paying attention. Which was easy to do because you had to be very careful where you walked.
Everything was closed downtown except Burger King and Value Master where I bought 3 beers and toasted to a couple survivors as we shared the cold brew that was perfect. A cold Red Stripe after a Hurricane is nice.
Asking around, I heard Red Dragon “had internet”, so I shot up to see what was happening in the world and especially Negril.
The place was packed with wires and chargers everywhere. Not so many people. They had current but no Internet. Flow was down as well. No one was able to call and talk to anyone. We were completely cut off from the rest of the world. This has not happened since Gilbert hit us back in ’88. But back then, Negril was generally cut off from the rest of the world anyway. Hell, we didn’t even know Gilbert was coming.
This show was totally different. Up til 6pm on Wednesday we had wall to wall coverage of Beryl and knew Negril was gonna get smacked. We heard Treasure Beach was gonna take the brunt of the winds, but cell service was off by then.
My trusty smartphone, which is no longer an active phone, just beeped that there is a critical website update I have to do for a hotel. This will be a day to try and get a connection at all costs.
There were a few plus sides of the actual hurricane. We had a pack of 4 kittens in the yard and Mom had bailed on them. They were huddled together to try and stay warm and keep the wind off them to no avail. I saw them and during one of the breaks in the storm gusts, I said “Get in here!”
I had never seen 4 kittens move so fast, and they were comfortably inside the house. Our 17 year old cat was none too pleased at first but she quickly caught on and accepted them for the night. The 2 dogs play with them all the time so the kittens just took this as a special treat.
Another scene, completely stupid on my part, was to open the door around 6:30pm when the height of the winds (100mph+) were constant. Upon opening the door, the only thing that I could relate it to was a shot in a horror movie where you are in a forest and suddenly all the trees come raging and reaching for you! That was exactly what it looked like. Horizontal rain smacking me in the face while every leaf on every branch on every limb on every tree is reaching out to get me. Not the smartest thing to do in a hurricane. Keep the doors SHUT!
I just found out that a place down the road has a generator and INTERNET so I will be heading there when they open. Thank YOU No Limit! God only knows what emails await.
A noteworthy mention about the coverage during the day of Beryl was from a crazy reporter Robert Ray from Fox Weather. I don’t know if he is alive or dead but he was doing some serious stupid things right on the rocks by the water. In the Youtube chat, comments were “the dude on the rock is back!” He may think he knows what he was doing, but if he is alive, it is by pure luck.
As he said, on his 50 mile, 3hour journey from the airport with his crew, he kept mentioning the deplorable infrastructure conditions. The pothole filled roads, power poles leaning haphazardly with lines dropping dangerously low. He couldn’t understand why the lines were not buried.
Since his segment was shown every half hour, the inadequacy of the Jamaica infrastructure was mentioned to the world. I hope the PM caught that part.
The best part of his complaints was about the current. For the past week the electricity has been flicking on and off at least a dozen times a day.
Robert Ray was telling the viewers that they may or may not be able to stay on the air because of the power. His greatest wonder was why the current was constantly going off when the storm really wasn’t that bad yet. Apparently he hasn’t spent a lot of time in Jamaica.
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