Wrong natural disaster

Yesterday, as if through the game of 'telephone' I got word that Dominica was under an earthquake warning. Are you kidding me??? Immediately I started freaking out, texting Jonathan to do some research because I wasn’t near a computer. He reminded me about the highest concentration of active volcanoes in the world but didn’t see anything about an earthquake. Great. 

Still, Dominica is on the same fault line as Haiti and I started imagining the only one lane road through the jungle to the only one runway airport with no runway lights. (Don’t judge me for planning my escape.) I started thinking about all the devastation in Haiti from a documentary I recently watched right when Liz called. We talked about what’s the difference in an earthquake warning compared to an earthquake watch? I don’t know. When do you know where and how to take cover? I don’t know that either. Should I get under a mattress or under my desk? My friend said to stock up on water…Why? In case I’m stuck in my apartment for 3 days??? I’ve never actually taken a precaution for being in a natural disaster before! I was scared to death. 

Later that afternoon I turned on the weather channel, not really even sure if earthquake coverage would be considered weather. Nothing was on about any earthquakes, and even though there isn’t a real Caribbean news channel, much less Dominican, there is some collaboration with the weather channel to cover tropical storms and depressions at the top of every hour. And of course since there has been a tropical storm about every other week- currently they were covering a new tropical depression, #4 of the season (out of 9 weeks I have been here!), named “Colin” that could potentially turn into a hurricane. No big deal to me though- I have been through hurricane disaster training at work; I know all the buildings are hurricane resistant. After there being a new warning every week I am sadly getting accustomed to earth shattering thunder, lightning bolts, crazy blowing strong winds, and power outages turning my fan off in the middle of the night. (Remember the experience with mom and dad in the treehouse in the jungle? Turned out to be tropical depression #3.) 

 

That night, I laid awake listening to the thunder, my apartment lost power, and like with all heavy rains, I woke up to no running water this morning. (I still don’t understand what the problem is with this place, but something about heavy rain contaminates the city’s water supply so my apartment runs out of water approximately one day a week. Ugh.) Still not worried about a hurricane though, I was proud I remembered the place I’m supposed to hide is under a door frame in case I felt an earthquake tremor. I walked to work this morning with an umbrella serving no purpose whatsoever because it seemed like the rain was coming at me like a fire hydrant, and periodically checked to see if the rain would stop in time to go lay out this afternoon. Local stores were empty of water bottles since everyone was “stocking up” and our office bathroom sink and toilet weren’t working. My new commitment of drinking lots of water turned into a catch 22- good thing that my apartment fridge is stocked up of water bottles, however, it sucks to have to constantly pee when the facilities don’t work! 

 

Anyway, this evening Michael and I were chatting and he said, “So by the way, apparently there wasn’t ever an earthquake.” His weather soothsayer accidentally confused her natural disasters. Did you guess this all along? The post title probably gave it away. Never an EARTHQUAKE, always a HURRICANE warning. I don't really know how you can confuse the two... but as I write this, luckily, Colin has dissipated over the Atlantic in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately I still don’t have running water.