Ivan el Terrible

There's something about a hurricane. Ever since Mitch, they've been my favourite disaster. Not the ones that hit the States; somehow trailer parks being washed away in southern Florida isn't quite the same. It's the ones that hit places that are already have ridiculously flimsy infrastructures. Big hurricanes, category fours and fives are really exciting. I think I have some perverse interest in seeing just how much damage they can cause. I mean it's incredible what some rain and wind can do. So when I heard that Ivan was a category Five heading straight for Kingston, well, I have to admit, I was a little excited. Then I felt bad I was disappointed when it got downgraded and shifted course. That's really terrible of me. I don't want hundreds or thousands of people to die, of course, I just want to see what kind of destruction could be caused.

I think part of it might be because there are just so many disasters around the world and most of them are caused by people blowing each other up or hacking their neighbours to bits with machetes. At least with a natural disasters, there's pretty much nothing you can do to stop it. No one is to blame for it. So if I have to be seeing horrible pictures of people suffering and catastrophic damage, at least let it be caused by a storm system and not some idiot with a rusty kalashnikov .

Ivan in Grenada

When I was in Mitch it was a great rush being in something I had no control over. We had been in Tela, on the Honduran coast for the weekend. It was a beautiful day on the Saturday but Sunday it had started raining a bit. We were wondering why the waves had become so big. We had thought about staying a day or two longer but with the weather decided to go back to PRR. When we got back, only then did we realize what we had narrowly missed being stuck in. Tela was whipped by Mitch and it would have been really bad to be stuck there. During the storm I was so bored. We were stuck at PRR and I had to ration my books, candles and water. There was no way of knowing how bad the Hurricane was since we had no radio or television. All we could do was sit and wait. For eight days.

Then after it passed I drove into Siguatepeque with our boss Enrique. We were taking a man from the village to hospital. As we drove along the highway, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At some points we had to detour through mud tracks since they were better than the highway. When I saw US troops on the road the concept of the extent of the damage started to come into focus a bit. I leaned out the truck window and just pointed my camera back down the road. I got the best photo I've ever taken by chance. A couple of days later we backed the truck with supplies to take north to El Progresso and San Pedro Sula. It's flatter there and there was a lot of flooding. That part was the worst bit, that damage the most extensive and the poverty the roughest.

The thing about Mitch was that it was such a surreal, unexpected experience. Maybe what was so important was that I couldn't help but feel dwarfed by it. I was not important compared to it and people really effected by it. It felt kind of like being on some sort of weird drug. There was definitely something about the experience I've never felt since but want to feel again. Maybe that's why I get off on cutting these Ivan stories right now and wishing they were bigger because it's the closest I can be to actually being there and getting that rush again.

Meanwhile, Ivan's been upgraded again to a Five and is hitting Cuba today.