When I woke up after the long night of thunderstorms last week, I wasn’t particularly worried. After all, I’m a grizzled veteran of flooding.
“Sure, it rained a lot,” I thought, “but there’s just no way it was worse than 2010.”
That year, Tropical Storm Otto brought more than 20 inches of rain to the Virgin Islands over the course of three days: Roads washed away in giant chunks, many homes and businesses were flooded out, and a cistern at the Beacon sprung a leak that watered the office for days. So I figured I’d seen it all.
“What could possibly go wrong that didn’t go wrong in 2010?” I thought as I got dressed in my second-storey apartment, which thankfully doesn’t leak.
Then I checked Facebook and chuckled. People were exaggerating as usual: Apparently, someone had used digital technology to superimpose a muddy Niagara Falls onto Flemming Street.
“What are tourists going to think?” I wondered.
Epic journey
After breakfast, I decided to check out the Beacon office. It tends to flood a bit in heavy rains, and I expected a repeat of 2010, when an inch or two of water and mud had to be swept out with brooms.
But although I live around the corner from work, getting there proved to be an epic journey. Knee-deep water lined the walkway outside my apartment, and mud sucked at my flip-flops as I shuffled toward Main Street.
Then I noticed a waterline on my jeep, which was parked nearby in inch-deep mud that hadn’t been there the previous day: Twigs clung halfway up my hubcaps, and from the look of things I was lucky that water hadn’t reached the engine.
I was starting to get a little worried when I saw a neighbour.
“Well, at least we know it can’t be worse than 2010?” I said hopefully, trying to look confident. She guffawed.
“2010?” she said scornfully. “This is worse than 2003!”
“Uh oh,” I thought.
I wasn’t here in 2003, and I’d never read about a big flood in the Beacon’s archives from that year. But then I remembered something: A large section of the 2003 archives are inexplicably missing.
As I walked toward the office, I passed other neighbours chatting as they took a break from shovelling mud.
“Worse than 2003,” I overheard. “Definitely worse than 2003!”
That’s when I began to consider skipping the office entirely and heading instead for the ferry. But I pressed on.
Destroyed
When I opened the office door, my first thought was that angry rioters had ransacked the newspaper because of our recent coverage of the airport expansion.
The entryway was blocked by an overturned trashcan, which balanced precariously on a two-foot-deep pile of mud and rocks.
Behind that, desk drawers and their contents were strewn across the floor with upturned chairs, sodden newspapers and other debris.
The waterline along the wall was nearly waist-high, and the refrigerator in the kitchen had overturned and washed a few feet toward the bathroom.
The back door was wide open because water and debris had busted the deadbolt.
“Ummm,” I whispered. “I think this might be worse than 2003.”
Cleaning up
The cleaning process — which isn’t over yet — required several workers, shovels, a pickaxe, a pressure washer and a chainsaw, which was used to remove water-swollen back issues from a soaked cabinet.
We lost almost everything in the downstairs office, including the brand-new printer, the copy machine, the furniture and a set of archives. But there was one silver lining: The two computers there remained above the waterline, and they appear to be functioning as well as they ever did.
And as hard as we were hit, things could have been much worse. Some businesses, after all, lost everything, and we’re grateful that we were able to get back up in running in a few days.
Moreover, the timing of the flood was impeccable: Since the Beacon never publishes during the week of the August Emancipation Festival holiday, we didn’t have to put out a newspaper last week. And if you’re reading this, it means that we managed to keep to our schedule this week.
Did that happen in 2003? I’m not sure, but thanks to another neighbour, I now have a theory of why I’d never read about that year’s flooding in our archives.
In 2003, she recalled, the floodwaters washed dozens of Beacon newspapers down Russell Hill Road, all the way to Main Street.
However, she added, this year’s flooding was definitely much worse. I nodded wisely and agreed.
Disclaimer: Dateline: Paradise is a column and occasionally contains satirical “news” articles that are entirely fictional.
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