I spent hurricane Ewa in my friends house across from Casa Di Amichi watching him nervously leaning against his flexing walls with his young family in the house and i thought nothing of it at the time.when hurricane Iniki hit ten years later i had a young family,Wren and Bruce were little kids and Christian wouldnt be born for another two years.that evening i filled all my cars gas tanks and my wife and i stayed up all night doing laundry and doing anything we could to prepare for disaster.the next morning when the sirens went off i decided that since i had young kids that i should go to the safest place i could find which i thought would be the princeville hotel,now the saint regis.after staying up all night i took a twin mattress there because i thought i would have a place to sleep.we were above the lobby in a corridor for a long time and my wife decided that we should move into one of the meeting rooms because she didnt feel safe there.there was so much water that had collected to the roof that a short time later the roof collapsed where we had been sitting.at that point we were taken around thru the front door and taken down to a lower floor corridor to spend the night.we didnt know it but as we came thru the front door we were being filmed and the narrator,Lee Cataluna said that we had fled to the hotel in the middle of the storm and asked to be let in which i guess made it sound more compelling in the iniki video.early in the morning a friend in princeville who was there with us invited us to his house to sleep as the worst of the storm had passed.the next morning i got up early to try and drive to kilauea to check on my house but couldnt get thru as the road was closed.when i finally did get home later that day my house had one broken window and some missing shingles while a half a block away a house on the rim of our little valley had flown into another neighbors house.times have changed as this morning my neighbor messaged me on Facebook to say that she was leaving at 6:45 to go pick up supplies and i asked for toilet paper,paper towels and rice.it seems like hurricanes bring out the best in people while the recovery sometimes brings out the worst.Christian said that if the storm hits since he is in the national guard he will be called in to serve maybe fixing the helicopters like the ones that flew in supplies during iniki.I really hope and pray that it passes us by.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 02:41:11 +0000
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