Weathering Hurricane Dean

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Saint Lucia. Ramzi and I have weathered our first “Caribbean Hurricane” without a problem. Hurricane Dean was a Category Two when it hit Saint Lucia on Friday morning. The eye of the hurricane was located just north of Saint Lucia, in between us and the island of Martinique. We live at the very north of the island, so our area got the worst of the storm. Basically, this translated into really intense winds (90 mph) and a lot of rain. The electric utility (LUCELEC) shut the electricity down island-wide around 2 am on Friday morning and much of the island had its electricity restored last night. We just got it back in our neighborhood about 30 minutes ago (about 34 hours later). We lost a rain gutter and a lot of branches, but really no serious damage. Unfortunately, one person did die in Saint Lucia. On Friday morning, a 62 year old man in a rural area went into a river to save a cow. The cow survived, but he did not. Some homes were destroyed and roofs taken off, but it is not as bad as it could have been (or as it appears might be in Jamaica in the Gulf of Mexico).

So, Ramzi, Iggy and I hunkered down inside the house from Thursday night through Saturday morning, with the exception of an invigorating walk in the rain on Friday afternoon, and actually slept through a lot of the worst of it. Isabel, luckily, is still visiting her grandparents in Vermont and was happily oblivious to the storm in her country of residence. We spoke with her a few times over the past couple of days (as we do normally when she is away from home) and she was having a blast at summer camp (ironically, the theme of the camp this week was “weather) and feeding the ducks near her grandparents summer home.

We hope that you all are well, and thank you for your calls and concern.

Sasha and Ramzi