Just a note to let you know that we're ok. We didn't really get much
weather here on the caye until about 9:30-10:00 last night. The wind
was really blowing through the night and didn't start to slow down
until after 4:00 in the morning. It rained a lot but nothing like
Keith in 2000. That was serious rain! It is now around 1:30pm our
time and we don't have any wind or rain at all - just cloudy.
I did have that weird scared "hurricane keith" feeling last night for
a while when I was waiting for the eye to make landfall. Choco was
upstairs sleeping and I couldn't believe he could sleep through it -
I guess I envied him.. I stayed up most of the night listening to
Love FM radio out of Belize City. It's a great radio station that has
hurricane coverage all through the night. People call in and report
what's going on in their area so it really gives everyone a "real
time" picture of what's really happening. You can actually get live
streaming radio station over the internet at this address:
<
http://www.lovefm.com/>
I have no idea what the wind speed was but I'm looking around trying
to find out. It was loud!
As for damages around here: our breadfruit tree right in back of the
main house actually broke in half right down the middle. It didn't do
any damage - broke into the back yard. But that's good - weeds out
the weak part of the tree and cleans things up a bit.
We did lose more of our property on the other side of the island. We
own a couple acres with another person right at the split and it's
down to about 1 1/2 acres now!
There is debris and lots of seaweed all over the island but nothing
that can't be raked up and cleaned up fairly easily. I saw a coffee
pot, a VCR and a lawn chair that was basically buried in the sand.
We've been raking and sweeping along with our neighbors - talking
with each other about the storm.
This morning we took a walk down by the split. The Lazy Lizard bar is
still standing believe it or not. We were sure there would have been
more erosion around it. Some of the piers in front were damaged by
the surge (4-6 feet or so) that were not built as high. We had no
damage at all to ours luckily. We had rebuilt it much higher after
losing the whole thing to Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
Our beach in front is higher but we did lose a bit of beachfront. I
haven't seen the other side of the island so can't report on what
went on there. But I don't think anything real serious happened to
anyone here.
We are very grateful to Choco's son Noah & his girlfriend Sheila who
were incredibly helpful to us in preparing for Dean!
So that's the scoop more or less. Hope everyone is well!