Even though Hurricane Ivan barrelled through the Cayman Islands 20 years ago, the haunting sights and sounds of the devastating storm have stayed with Nadine Davis and Alan Cameron Bush.
“It was scary. It was traumatising. It was distressing,” Davis, an electronic monitoring supervisor at the 911 division of the Department of Safety Communications, told the Cayman Compass.
Lifeline through the storm
Davis was one of the few 911 dispatchers on duty throughout the powerful storm that eventually claimed two lives as it passed through the Cayman Islands on 11-12 Sept. 2004.
Bush, a public safety communications supervisor, said as he watched the storm unfold on the radar there was a lot of anxiety. “We didn’t know at the time what would actually really happen.”
Davis said knowing how strong Hurricane Ivan had become, all she could think was “we are all going to die”.
Despite this feeling, Davis said she knew the community needed them to keep calm through the storm.
In the hours ahead of Ivan’s arrival, the department had to relocate from the George Town Police Station to the just-completed Cable and Wireless building on Eastern Avenue, which had not been fully outfitted, according to Davis.
At the time of Hurricane Ivan’s passage, Director of Public Safety Communications Sean Vasquez was a police officer.
He recalled hunkering down at the Citrus Grove building with his family and fellow officers and their families.
While there, Vasquez said all he could think about was getting out into the community to help after watching the storm build.
“It was just one of those incidents where you wanted to be a part of what was happening with our community. You wanted to reach out. You wanted to help,” he said.
As the storm began to pick up, Davis said there were no windows to look out of at the Cable and Wireless building.
“All we could hear is the very loud noise. And that’s one of the things that when we talk about it it’s the sound of Ivan that was very frightening. It’s a roar of the wind,” she said.
The operators, she said, were all imagining the worst.
Keep calm and carry on
As the storm raged, the calls started flooding in and the operators focused on doing their jobs.
“We signed up for this. You have to put aside your personal feelings and thoughts to be able to do the job and do the job well. The calls that we were getting were screams and shouts of help,” Davis said.
Bush said the calls became so overwhelming that they had to seek help from the Cable and Wireless employees who were with their families sheltering in the building.
“[The calls] were just overflowing. Obviously, [the employees] didn’t have no experience. But any kind of help was needed. It was very intense. We got calls from people on their roof, water is up to their cabinets. They were in the tub,” Bush said.
He said it was difficult fielding those kind of calls because they could not dispatch anyone to render assistance due to the severe weather.
“You couldn’t absolutely do anything but just answer their calls, try to reassure them that things are going to be okay. So long as you still have that lifeline on the line itself it made a difference,” he said.
Davis said handling all those calls made her realise that many people were unprepared for a storm of that magnitude.
She recounted talking to a man who first called when the water was coming into his home and was at his ankles. It was up to his knees when he called a second time.
“He called back and the water was now up to his waist. And I’m like, go up on the counter. The water is now up to his neck and I’m saying, ‘Okay, can you pull the fridge out? Can you climb up on the fridge?’ And he did that. When he called back again, he was like ‘This is it. There’s nowhere else for me to go’,” she said shakily, as she recalled the conversation.
After that final call, Davis said she did not hear back from the man.
As the storm went on, the calls became more chaotic, she said.
Bush recounted talking to a family of four stranded on the countertop in their home as the water rose.
“They didn’t know what to do. They were practically begging us to tell them what they can do. I mean, we instructed them the best we could,” he said.
The aftermath
Both Davis and Bush said they were stunned when they emerged from the building after the storm.
Bush said it was surreal because the landscape had completed changed.
Despite the harrowing experience, they both say they would do it again.
“911 is a part of me and there is nothing I would do more or no place I would want to be if there’s a storm than here doing what I love,” she said.
Bush’s message coming out of that experience: “Always be prepared.”
Community resilience
Vasquez said he and a group of off-duty officers at Citrus Grove were sent into the community.
“We very quickly realised that this was a storm that was unprecedented at the time … there was a serious, immediate threat to life,” he said.
Vasquez was deployed in the Windsor Park and Randyke Gardens areas.
He said the flooding was so severe that people were riding jet skis, and were in kayaks and boats trying to get out.
Vasquez recounted rescuing residents on a kayak while he was seated on the arm of a tractor.
“I grabbed ahold of that kayak with the persons on board and the tractor pulled us out, thankfully, where we could get to safety and dry land. That was definitely … something I would not want to relive,” he said.
He said the aftermath was absolutely devastating and a testament to the “ferocity” of Mother Nature.
The community spirit, however, shone brightly despite the destruction.
“It was one of the few moments that I could say that persons in the community … behaved like family. We were there for each other. There was no selfish acts that I could see,” Vasquez said.
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