For the latest information on storm activity in the Cayman Islands, as well as information on how to prepare for hurricane season, visit Storm Centre.
As seasoned hurricane veterans, Anne Rice and Jannet Lawrence know to stock up when the season starts, especially having lived through the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.
The sisters, though living in separate communities in Florida, were hunkering down Tuesday as they readied for the arrival of Hurricane Idalia, which is expected to make landfall early Wednesday.
“I’ve got all my little gadgets plugged in and all charged. I put lots of water in the freezer to be ice so I’ll have cold stuff afterwards [if the electricity goes out]. We have to be prepared for the situation,” Rice told the Cayman Compass in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon from her St. Petersburg home.
She said weather conditions were expected to begin deteriorating later Tuesday afternoon.
“It just got overcast. We have sunshine… it’s not bright sunny, but it’s nice, pleasant weather actually, but that’s always the calm before the storm,” Rice added.
Hurricane Idalia, which is projected to be a major hurricane by Wednesday, was continuing to strengthen Tuesday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of nearly 90 miles per hour, with higher gusts, according to the 2pm forecast from the National Hurricane Center.
Caymanians prep for storm arrival
Lawrence, who lives in Lithia, Tampa, said she too is ready for the storm.
“I have all my food. I have 12 cases of water in my house. I have lots of flashlights and [batteries]. I’m ready. The only thing I needed to buy yesterday was bread and put gas in my car. I’m an island girl, I get ready for hurricanes when the hurricane season starts,” she said in a Zoom interview.
Lawrence has opened her doors to Caymanian students in the area to ride out the storm at her house.
“They’re away from their mommies and daddies in a strange country, and most of them have nowhere to go. Or even if they have somewhere to go, I still make sure they’re safe. If I weren’t here, my children would’ve been in the same position when they were in university,” she said.
She said she often invites students into her home when storms are near, and also offers accommodation to Caymanians who are in Florida for medical treatments.
“It is my Cayman connection,” she said.
By Tuesday afternoon, one student had already arrived at Lawrence’s home, and she was expecting four more to join.
“The last hurricane, they had time to get home, but they closed the Tampa airport yesterday and there are no flights to Cayman on Tuesday and Wednesday, so most of them are stuck here,” she said.
Daphne Scott, from Cayman Brac, who is studying at the University of South Florida, is staying with Lawrence and said she is grateful for the Caymanian company.
“I just wanted to say thank you to Ms. Jannet. Honestly, she always does this, not only when it’s hurricane season. She always checks up on me throughout the year, throughout each month. So I really do appreciate it.
“She’s always caring about us [students] and I can’t do anything without her. Since I’ve been in Tampa, she’s really been a great help. Honestly and truly, I will never forget that,” Scott said.
Over in Spring Hill, Rebecca Cahajla, who grew up in the Cayman Islands and went through the trauma of Hurricane Ivan, was tracking Idalia with her 14-year-old son Sebastian, who is a certified storm spotter with the US National Weather Service and a Weather Ready Nation ambassador for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Last year, when Hurricane Ian was heading her way, Cahajla, nee Duquesnay, and her son evacuated their home.
“I have PTSD from Ivan. I stayed for Ivan, like we all did, because we couldn’t leave. It’s very hard to evacuate an island. I just could not put myself mentally through that. I had just bought my house four months prior to Ian, and I left,” she said in a telephone interview.
This time, however, Cahajla said she is not leaving her home.
She said her son had predicted that something was coming through from the Central American gyre.
“We were already sniffing at it about two weeks ago,” she said.
She said her co-workers thought she was crazy at first, but now she said her son was right.
Cahajla said she watches the weather updates regularly to follow the path of the storm.
“I know that I will probably receive sustained tropical storm force winds overnight tonight, and all day tomorrow, pretty much monsoon rains. I think I’ll probably get higher gusts, but I am nowhere near the water,” she said.
She said, earlier Tuesday when she walked out her house and looked south, she could see the clouds building.
“This ain’t my first rodeo and I have never evacuated from a storm until I went through Ivan, and now I’m a ‘Chicken Little’. But I am staying put, unless all of a sudden [Idalia] makes a drastic turn, then we’re all in the same boat. We are all going to get hit, there’s nothing at this point we can do,” she said.
Storms with ‘I’ names bring painful memories
When forecasters announced that the name of the storm heading their way was Idalia, it brought back memories for all the women of other storms beginning with the letter I – Ivan in 2004 and Ian in 2022.
“Of course, it’s got to start with the letter I,” Cahajla said. “I think I would like to sign a petition to get rid of the letter I, but then I’m worried H and J which would be just as [bad].”
In Lawrence’s case, she said she gave the weather system a talking to.
“I said this morning, ‘Idalia, you don’t frighten me. I knew Ivan,'” Lawrence stated, adding that she knew the storm was getting stronger.
“I’m pretty far inland and I’m not too concerned about the flooding,” she added. “My neighbourhood has a lot of drainage, so I’m not too concerned about that. But we will get wind and rain… how bad, we don’t know.”
Lawrence said now it was a “waiting game” as storms can shift.
Rice said one of her sons, who lives further north in Florida, has already evacuated his family to Georgia, while her second son is riding out Hurricane Idalia in the Florida Panhandle.
She’s been keeping an eye on the social media group Caymanians in Florida, and believes her fellow islanders are ready for whatever comes.
“I don’t see any panic on that page… so I believe everybody’s prepared or has somewhere to go,” she said.
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