Hurricane Jolene: Landfall Expected Within 24 Hours: Finish Preparing Now

Just to bring it back to someone other than me thinking about it… on Wednesday the 17th, the local emergency radio was still describing a developing offshore system. Hathian was sitting in rain, oppressive humidity and temperatures around 27°C, with forecasters offering the wonderfully reassuring advice that there was “nothing to panic about yet. Probably.”

The recommendation then was to consider sandbags.

Consideration time is over.

Jolene Is Coming

Let’s get it out of the way, because gallows humour is how I operate. Apparently the hurricane is called Jolene. I’d suggest that someone was having a bit of a joke that begging a beautiful woman not to take your man was not enough; now us Hathianites also have to beg her not to take our roof.

What we do know is enough that ‘should board up’ is now… do it or else. It is already raining. Water is rising. Supplies are disappearing. A hurricane is expected within 24 hours.

Act accordingly.

FDH: Prepare Now

The Fire Department of Hathian has been pushing hurricane preparedness throughout the season, which officially runs from June 1 through November 30.

Their advice is considerably less colourful than mine and consequently probably worth listening to.

FDH recommends households keep at least three days of water and non-perishable food, including roughly one gallon of water per person per day, alongside flashlights, spare batteries, a first-aid kit, medication, a battery or hand-crank radio and some cash in case electronic payment systems fail. Important documents, identification, insurance information and medical records should be protected in a waterproof container. People with pets should also plan for their food, water and medications rather than discovering halfway through the storm that Mr. Snuggles apparently also requires calories.

Before conditions deteriorate further, secure loose objects outside, charge phones and backup batteries, fill prescriptions and fuel tanks, check the weaker parts of your home and know how you intend to get out if leaving becomes necessary. Yes, that means now.

Not when the roof begins expressing itself creatively.

Supplies Are Already Going

Emergency radio reports that supplies across the area are already gone or disappearing at an alarming rate, with some residents and businesses offering additional provisions to people making their way towards shelters. Anyone who has visited a shop in Hathian immediately before bad weather will recognise the traditional civic ritual of discovering that apparently every other person in the parish also urgently required batteries, bottled water and the last sheet of plywood.

We have already found one alternative source. Earlier this week, the Observer encountered Wilbur Fitzgerald and Grey operating their own pop-up hurricane supply operation, offering plywood, flashlights, batteries, water, fuel, sandbags, canned food, tarps, first-aid kits, a lifeboat and, for reasons that remain difficult to classify as emergency preparedness, a parrot. Fitz famously informed me that “price is subjective.”

He also said a single mother of five who genuinely needed a case of water would receive it free.

This has left me in the professionally inconvenient position of being unable to determine whether he is currently a disaster capitalist, a community volunteer or somehow both. For more on that particular little corner of storm preparation, see the Observer’s “Price Is Subjective: Fitz Opens Hathian’s Hurricane Shop.”

If you do buy plywood from him, please tell me what you paid.

This remains an investigation.