The preparation, enduring, and cleanup of a cyclone is a very taxing process and something I will never forget and in fact feel privileged to have experienced. On Tuesday the preparation began with the complete evacuation of the RSPCA. It was crazy, we had to fly out all of our adoptable animals to Brisbane, which meant loading 3 cats or 5 kittens in crates (pet packs) due to limited space on the plane and as many dogs as we could fit. The rest were sent to emergency fosters, myself being one of them. The whole place was chaos, the cats were all labeled incorrectly and had to be scanned and sorted, paperwork placed printed in triplicate and issued to Brisbane and kept for our records. Channel 7 news came out to film the process and now my arm is famous! The pound (council) let the dogs go to their owners without a fine, we just needed everyone out. The tidal surge was supposed to be high and would put one of our kennels underwater, the strays and isolation kennels were not made to withstand a cyclone at all so everyone had to go. This is alot of animals I'm talking about and I don't know how many made it out safetly as I only worked adoptions. To add to the chaos they started canceling flights and arrangements for a shuttle began. It's good to know that no matter what, the animal's welfare is a priority. The foster I got to look after is "Rose" or "Rosa" as I call her.
Rosa is a cattle dog/kelpie mix and I have been working with her for a few weeks now as she was an abuse case that left her very shy and just as she was coming out of her shell she was attacked by the dog in the run they shared. She regressed and couldn’t be put through the trauma of being flown to Brisbane.
The next step was to get my house ready and make plans for alternate shelter if necessary. We put everything that was loose, including tables and chairs in my house. The fridge was tied down the back of my house and had a tent over it to keep it from getting drenched. The plants went into the garage, as did my bike. We sandbagged the front of my house and taped all of the windows. I also packed a bag of my most precious valuables. This included some of my books, pictures of my family, my safe, some electronics, and some cloths. I put all of these things into a room underneath the main house, which is bricked in, and where shelter would be sought if things got too hairy in my house.
The cluttered mess was only made worse by the rain that started to blow in, prompting me to cover anything I didn't want ruined.
Robbie stayed with me as his place was in a flood prone area and wasn’t safe for him. It was great to have someone there to help prepare and even better to go through it with. Both being adrenaline junkies it made the whole thing a lot less of an ordeal.
On Wednesday we were ready for the cyclone to hit and ride it like a roller-coaster, as my good friend Rikki put it. At 3:30pm the power went out and thus began a long line of improvisation. We had 4.4 gallons (20 litres) of water, 20 litres of fuel (petrol) and 26.5 (12 kilos) of ice in three coolers (eskies). All batteries charged and movies ready to watch, candles and flashlights (torches) at the ready. At dusk the real gusts started but it had started blowing in around 12pm, and it was time to move in. We got settled and made dinner in the dark.
I had made rice earlier knowing it didn't need refrigeration and would be the base of all our dishes. Tonight's cuisine was tin salmon, rice, ranch dressing, cocktail sauce, heaps of Tabasco, and Julio's seasoning (folks from Texas know the brand). Sounds gross but actually it was pretty good!
Bellies full we got settled and listened to the storm. I have recorded it's sounds and have video of what we could see before dark, these will be uploaded later as they still need to be sorted. Around 11pm the gails could be felt inside the house and the rain was horizontal. At midnight it started to get interesting with gails blowing at about 90 mph (144 kph). The rain started coming in a vent at the eve of my house and it literally rained inside half of my little flat. I did my best to move things and cover what I could with the two towels I had. At about 1:30am the full intensity was felt and the house shook with each gust. It was time to move below. We didn't go underneath the main house as it was a bit dodgy outside so we sheltered underneath the loft ready to put the couch over us. Around 2am the storm peaked and did so for about 3 hours. The wind speeds were up to 127 mph (204 kph) and maybe higher with each gust. I started to doubt whether the roof would stand up to it but it did. I got about 3 hours of sleep and woke around 7am to see the damage. It was still blowing pretty hard in gusts and rain was coming intermittently.
The sound of the storm.... or rather the storm in the background. Honestly you could here the frogs from in the middle of the yard with the wind whipping around you.
This is a 19 hour progression of the storm starting at 8pm Wednesday. The timestamps on the images are what times it was predicted to have been there, however the actual times vary a little bit.
8:00pm
12:00pm
3:00pm
We left the perishable food in the fridge and freezer as long as we could before transferring it to the eskies. This was about 24 hours later and I was surprised at how well it kept. We still had no power and soon the water would be cut. We were fine though, we had survived and so did my house. There was some tree damage around but not much. The real damage was around town.
I consider myself lucky to have survived and been able to witness such a rare and powerful natural event. In my next post I will cover the aftermath which still boggles my mind.
Thanks for sharing this information! What a neat perspective to gain
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