My pool is closed again today. So I'm posting this as therapy for my general crankiness on the subject of Isabel.
Into the Wind
Hunkering Down in The Hours Before Isabel
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 19, 2003; Page C01
Capitulation preceded precipitation. The whole city shut down hours in advance of the first breeze. Perhaps no storm has ever been anticipated for so long, or had such a debilitating societal effect before the first raindrop.
All the public schools closed, the United States government told workers to stay home, and still, as the morning progressed, there was only the slightest freshening of the wind. The mayor announced that garbage pickup would be on an early schedule and (uh-oh) the recycling pickup would be canceled entirely. But the storm remained far away.
Metro shut down all operations, Air Force One zoomed to safety, the president skedaddled.
And still we waited for Isabel.
This hurricane was predicted so far in advance, one of the forecasts may have been by Nostradamus. The storm was slower than Christmas. Isabel taught Washingtonians an interesting lesson about tropical cyclones: They don't exactly slam into town all at once. No, conditions just sort of deteriorate. For a while, things aren't so bad, but then they get a little worse, then lighten up again, then worsen, a back-and-forth process that inexorably builds over the course of many hours into something that grabs your attention.
No one knew quite what to expect, despite reports every two minutes on the radio and the TV telling us we should expect high winds and lots of rain. Somehow that didn't totally nail it. What would it really be like? A prolonged thunderstorm? Scary? Dangerous? Was it all media hype? The only thing for certain was that the power would go out, since, in the Washington area, half a million people will be plunged into darkness if an alley cat sneezes on a utility pole.
The approach of a hurricane is bracing, adrenalizing, and reminds us that what really matters in life is not money, or glory, or fancy cars or entertainment systems, but something we've completely ignored in our quest for the good life: the gutters.
At the Home Depot at Seven Corners about 1 p.m., with the first rain band already passing over the region, hundreds of people were grabbing long, black plastic tubes to attach to their downspouts. Their minds were in their gutters. On a hurricane day, everyone pays attention to the neighbors, because we're all in this together, yet simultaneously competing. The problem for many people in Washington is that there is always someone who is ahead of the game, way ahead, like 8,000 watts of generator ahead.
Pulling out of the Home Depot lot was Rick Pereira, 37, in his gleaming F-150 eight-cylinder pickup, armed with enough batteries to illuminate the Eiffel Tower. Pereira is a contractor, so he owns a lot of tools and, indeed, claims to own every power tool that Home Depot sells. He said he has been through several hurricanes in North Carolina, was raised in Portugal without electricity and now has seven generators, six of them on loan. In a crisis, his cell phone won't stop ringing because everyone knows he'll be calm and competent.
"They're like, 'Rick, help me out,' " he says, smiling. "People get like it's the end of the world. You have to calm them down."
About 3:30, there were a few vicious gusts, and some more insistent bands of rain, but even so, an umbrella was not yet rendered a ridiculous instrument. Edith Shafer, checking out the seawalls in Georgetown, feared that she would fly away like Mary Poppins. But mostly she had a Norway maple on her mind, a decrepit tree that wants to drop on her home.
"It's going to take out either my car or my house. I don't know which. It's going to come down at 4 o'clock this morning," she said.
Blyden Davis wanted more action. Where was the emergency? He's a George Washington University student, and like everyone else he had an unexpected hurricane holiday. Why did they have to shut down the city for a little rain and the occasional gust of wind?
"I wanna see something happen," he said, and then just a minute later, on command, Isabel huffed and puffed, and strange things started happening with the Potomac, the wind racing across the water in several directions at once. A fish broke the surface, then took the weather report back to the murk.
Stanley Lucas, from Haiti, said he lived through hurricanes David and Andrew. The situation here is so different, what with all the government warnings and the precautions, he said. He looked at the river and said of the wind, "It's like, how do you say, playing violin with the water."
At 5 in the afternoon, Will Shaw was riding out the storm on a yacht. It's the Sequoia, the lovely old presidential yacht, saturated with history, the mahogany walls hung with photos of Nixon and Brezhnev, FDR and JFK.
"It's raining and windy. It's mediocre. It's just a bad rainstorm at this point," Shaw said as he looked out at the Washington Channel. As if the storm had felt the insult, the boat rocked and yawed. Deterioration is a subjective matter, and at 5:30, with the whole city now hunkered down, the wind whipping, the weatherpersons talking of tropical storm winds registering in the city, the open-air fish market on the Southwest waterfront was still open. The fishmongers work on floating barges. "I don't think our lives are in danger," said Bart Thomas of Pruitt's Seafood. He said he'd spend the night on the barge, upstairs.
Isabel had closed the nation's capital, the schools and the Metro, and the federal government had long since been shuttered, but the fish market didn't want to say quit. The fish and the shrimp sat inert on their beds of ice, but a few of the blue crabs looked like they had someplace to go.
It was about this time -- 6 p.m. -- that lights started to go dark here and there. A Northwest Washington caller to Pepco got a computerized response: It is anticipated that the power will be restored by 6 p.m. on Sept. 25. That would be seven days. Somewhere around 8 p.m. the lull hit. An ominous lull. On the radio the newscasters declared that "the worst is yet to come." It was stated in a reassuring tone: Don't worry; there really will be a horrifying storm. By the Georgetown waterfront, camera crews bided their time and waited patiently for something, anything, to happen. The storm surge had yet to start surging.
At 9 p.m. four friends gathered at Nathans, a Georgetown watering hole that prides itself on staying open during natural disasters, or, as Jennifer Key, an electrical utility lawyer (who might have plenty of business in days ahead), put it, "come Isabel or high water."
"We went to the store and got six cases of wine," said paramedic Sylvie Metropolit.
"I represent Eveready Battery company," noted lawyer Jim Adduci, and then reiterated this extraordinary claim during sharp questioning. (A battery lawyer! Only in Washington!)
"I was a hot ticket in this storm," he said.
Back on the street, things were changing. Trees were down everywhere, and branches and leaves, and the lights had gone out for upward of half a million people. A hurricane is not just windy and wet; it's also very dark.
Just before 10, the air felt warmer. The wind carried a faint whiff of the tropics.
It'd been a long wait, but she would be here any minute.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company |
