Grand Cayman: "Devastation beyond imagination"

At 9 am local time on Monday, as the first reports of the full extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Ivan began to come in, the early morning scene has been described as ‘devastation beyond imagination’.
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Just about every house on the island has lost part or all of its roof, in some cases the debris landing on the roofs of adjacent buildings.
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In a live interview on Citadel Radio on Monday, Connolly said that there had been reports of people being killed during the passage of the category five storm that had trucks and cars "floating like toys".
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"I don't know when the Cayman Islands will ever be like it was before, " she said noting that the British Dependent Territory was now looking to Britain for assistance in the aftermath of the hurricane that has killed at least 60 people during its passage through the Caribbean.
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http://www.caymannetnews.com/2004/09/738/imagination.shtml

Even the shelters built to withstand 200 mph winds were damaged. IMHO, no one should have been on that island when the hurricane hit--I've been there and it's just too flat and too small. If I were in charge of disaster planning for the Caymans I would rent empty cruise ships to take everyone off.

Oh man, I hate to see what this storm is going to do to Cuba. It's going to be really bad.

I hate to be selfish, but I really hope this storm doesn't continue it's NW track. I don't want it to go to Louisiana where my family lives.

and on the coast. Don't go wishing it here. I've been through 5 hurricanes including a particularly nasty one in 1970 at Corpus Christi and no one deserves it (Crawford is too far inland anyway). If you are going to do any wishing, hope it looses strength, because once it's in the Gulf, it's going to hit someone.

outside of wealthy Americans going there to evade taxes?

from the CIA World Facts site

It's a lot more minority than I would have thought.

gotta clean up them bathrooms.

Why didn't they evacuate the island? I feel so bad for those people. Hopefully there will be information about how we can help out.

Ironically, Grand Cayman got the brunt of it, while the smaller islands did better.

Mebbe we can start using the world's military to help evade these disasters... maybe we could bring the nat guard home and let them guard against national disasters.... maybe we could do the right thing.

at a few days notice? I just don't think it could be done. Or do you mean they should keep them there on standby throughout the hurricane season? Would you propose that for all Caribbean islands?

And there is enough wealth in the Cayman Islands to afford it to rent enough to save its people, IMHO.

And, yes, I suppose I would propose it for any island that is so small and flat that a hurricane cover it. I don't like to see people die.

Also, I should have said that the cruise ships would only be part of an evacuation plan. They could also have scheduled a lot of airplanes to take people out, too.

The bottom line is that if there is a political will to do something monumental, it can often be done.

the possibility that nature could so turn against man... and become so unrelenting in her fury.... that we end up having to use our military resources to defend against a world weather/ecological/geological system gone mad.... mad at us perhaps. Crazier things have happened.

Look at selection 2000......

their owners build them to make money. I think finding empty ships to get to an island in the time required (3 days?) would be next to impossible - possibly you could have an international agreement that any ship passengers must be thrown off their cruises at the nearest port, I suppose.

Hurricane Ivan would, at the very least, have required the evacuation of Grenada and the Caymans. That's nearly 150,000 people (I don't think a ship could have evacuated people from Grenada, put them back, and then made it to the Caymans in time). 30 of the largest cruise ships, taking 5,000 each (how many could a ship take safely?)?

A plane plan, too, would require the cancellation of all the flights around to make a sizeable dent in the numbers left on the islands.

I think they'd be better off building public buildings to the required standard to withstand hurricanes, and getting people to them - it's a lot easier to get families to the local school or hall. Do we know if anyone was actually killed when inside a proper hurricane shelter?

Granada, for example, is not nearly as flat as the Caymans, so shelters might be fine there.

And I would certainly do whatever it took to save everyone. The poorest resident of the poorest island would be just as important to me as the wealthy ones. I read that Dart Management flew its people out right before the hurricane, but they did nothing to help the poor people.

under a Bush administration????

taken off the island. evil Castro moved everyone from the tip of Cuba starting last week..they had no choice. they will probably all live

Castro simply had to load the people into busses and send them east to ride out the storm, but how do you evacuate 40,000 people on a chain of islands the size of DC that are located hundreds of miles from any other land? Even if they had redirected every cruise ship in the Caribbean to the Caymans, with capacities of 1,000 to 3,000 people each they simply wouldn't have had the harbor capacity to board their entire population before the hurricane struck. Evacuation was practically impossible.

That's the downside to living on a low-lying and remote island in the middle of a hurricane zone.

is that the one major industry on most of these islands is tourism and there is a tendency to put off raising alarms until it's too late (don't scare the tourists and make them leave). Another problems is complacency sets in. If you live on any of these islands for any length of time you will have experienced a hurricane and most people begin to feel that "well we did OK with the last one, what's the big deal". What they don't understand is the tremendous difference between a direct hit with a cat 4 or 5 and a glancing blow from a cat 1 or 2.

Here in Houston, people think that all hurricanes are like Alicia which hit here in the 80's, but Alicia was a small hurricane (a cat 1 or barely a 2). They don't realize that going from 80mph winds to 160mph winds doesn't just double the destructive power - the proportions are really exponential. I've experience 160+mph sustained winds and nothing much can withstand it. What isn't knocked down directly by the force of the wind is battered into a pile of rubble by flying debris. In 80mph winds, if you have to evacuate your home, you can struggle on foot against the wind for a short distance to a safer place. In 160mph winds, you cannot stand, you cannot craw - you will be blown along the ground totally helpless. Even the smallest wind borne debris becomes a lethal missle.

Evacuation of islands would be difficult at best, even if it was begun days before a strike. The logistics and the expense of such an evacuation makes it hard to commit to such a decision when the hurricane is still far away and might still weaken of veer in another direction. On the mainland it is a simple task to drive inland even as late a 8-12 hours before the strike except in the most populated areas with limited evacuation routes (Galveston comes to mind).

especially for such a strong storm.

I will be praying for all these people ... Caymans, Grenada, Cuba, Jamaica ...

And we've put so much money into Iraq, and have so many problems of our own, that we can't afford to really help our island neighbors clean up and rebuild. I heard we sent Grenada $50,000 last week.

$50,000? When nearly every home was damaged? Welcome to the Bush economy.

I'm sorry I DO feel for the people but I just wanted to throw that in there.

thanks

same thing. Grand Caymen is the host for lots of Corp. tax avoiders. I wonder just what effect this will have the the "protected" people?

The Caymans have caused the United States a lot of grief.

General lack of sympathy here.

Sorry to say... it will probably have little if any effect. Many of these companies.. I forget which one was given as an example... Tyco perhaps..... didn't even have an office there.... it was all on paper.

I hope this sort of thing isn't rampant in the world... but from the looks of this article... it is far worst than even I imagined.

http://www.holisticjunction.com/displayarticle.cfm?ID=1311
The Shadowy World of International Finance
Strange, penumbral, characters roam the boardrooms of banks in the countries in transition. Some of them pop apparently from nowhere, others are very well connected and equipped with the most excellent introductions. They all peddle financial transactions which are too good to be true and often are. In the unctuously perfumed propinquity of their Mercedesed, Rolex waving entourage - the polydipsic natives dissolve in their irresistible charm and the temptations of the cash: mountainous returns on capital, effulgent profits, no collaterals, track record, or business plan required. Total security is cloyingly assured.

doesn't take this opportunity to talk about aWol's lack of knowledge on the costs of destruction compared to sensible environmental policy? I read a report that Hurricane politics may play in FL vote because Bush is coming with federal aid. The story never addresses the issue that Bush/GOP policies on the environmental global warming are the cause of the destruction and death. Now is that balanaced moral reporting? As Gore said 4 years ago, most of the scientists are in agreement on this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=820290

When it hits the mainland, it going to be real bad.

of the money kind, the people whose money is processed there don't really live there all the time. So how much help will the money people who make a bundle off of their off shore banking scheme contribute to the citizens?

like fiction.

Especially that bit with the tornadoes in LA

We have destrroyed the atmosphere's ability to stay in balance and the atmosphere will take its revenge...

ANOTHER thing to thank the Rethugs for

Mother Nature has been flinging hurricanes at the Caribbean Islands, and typhoons at SE Asia for MILLENNIA...

There is also a reason that the "natural vegetation" does quite well during and after these storms..(Look at the "design" of palms)..

Humans have mucked up the works with concrete (so there is flooding instead of drainage)and non-native trees that break and become projectiles or down power lines...The large numbers of people who have inhabited these paradises have brought pollution, sewage, and garbage that gets "redistributed" after these storms..

When I was a kid, there were still natives living in villages (The Cuna & San Blas Indians).. Their "houses" were thatched, and after a storm, they just gathered up the remnants and built new ones.. They went to high ground when the storms were coming, and when it was over, they just moved a bit "up or down coast" and started again.. They realized that "permanence" was not really possible, so they wasted little time trying to fight nature..

My favorite of all islands, it is very sad
I was there several years ago, it is very quiet and relaxing

Oh, wait ... we'd probably have to invade them if that happened.

Virginia last 2 weeks -Gaston
Florida- frances
Jamaica = Caymans(overseas homophobes)-Ivan
heading now for Louisiana- Can Texas be far behind?
maybe Falwell and Robertson can divert them All the abortinist and homos can use the rain in California