Cyclone Holland A

Cyclone Geralda 1994

By Coen van Wyk, Port Louis

 On 9 February 1994, I address the Rotary Club of Port Louis on the forthcoming elections in South Africa. On their agenda is also a request from a member to provide assistance to a Rotary Club in Antananarivo, badly hit the previous weekend by Cyclone Geralda. While expressing relief that Geralda missed us, one of the sugar farmers caution that the next tropical depression  named Hollanda, might hit us. Geralda was turned away by a high pressure system to the south. but this has now moved away.

Thursday 10 February, a public holiday in Mauritius in honour of the Chinese New Year, greets us with the news that there is a cyclone warning 1 out. Hollanda has intensified. is now a weak cyclone, and may hit us over the next day or so. All precautions should be taken, food and fuel stocked up, and we should stand by for further warning.

By 10h00 we move to a class 2 warning. A cyclone is now probable, lower antennas, get boats to safety, and make ready. Fortunately two colleagues from Pretoria, visiting paradise, are on hand to help lower the TV antenna, and put away garden furniture. Cyclone cocktails are served: a young coconut. removed from the tree to avoid it becoming a missile during the cyclone, its top cut open, with a shot of disinfectant added. The best disinfectant comes from Scotland, in a square bottle with a skew label.

At noon, we take our colleagues to their hotel and on our return see some of my fishermen friends struggling to get their boats out of the water. The little Suzuki jeep is not comfortable. but in 4x410 low-ratio she can climb trees, and a two ton boat is not too bad. Moving it 100 metres down the road, one of the trailer wheels come off, but we get it to safety. A pirogue is towed over rollers under the trees, and meanwhile the rain is pouring down, buckets full. The feeling of anxiety in the air is palpable. Dogs seek shelter, no birds are seen, the wind is rough and threatening.

Back home, and now we pass to warning 3, a cyclone is imminent. We sit on the veranda and drink beer, safe from the wind from the east In the afternoon. We pretend to be blase about the cyclone, and even get a short siesta. Then we get back to trying to decipher the creole news broadcasts, and to find out what is going on.

Sunset in a cyclone is not spectacular, the grey becomes black, and that is all. But now, according to the news, we are at warning 4, winds are now exceeding 120km per hour, and the cyclone might pass directly over the island, at around midnight. The recorded telephone message, in English, is still at level three.

By eight o'clock the news warns, in increasingly idiomatic creole that the cyclone is now an intense cyclone  and is approaching the northwest coast, at an accelerated speed. The front patio is still shielded from the wind, and if you stand outside, you discover the meaning of the word indescribable.

The English language lacks words for a wind that does not howl or scream. It roars round the comers carrying water like the spray from a fire hose. In the light of a torch it looks like a plastic sheet. The sea is flat, as soon as a wave forms the wind rips the top off. The spray looks like smoke.

Not much is visible around tis, branches lashing wildly, unidentified objects whip by, corrugated iron sheets fly by like sheets of paper. A sound like a rusty gate makes me look for a loose shutter or open window. I find a Mynah bird, in a protected comer, unable to get out of its temporary refuge without being blown out to sea, terrified and shrieking. The telephone is cut off, not to be reconnected until three weeks later.

Now, unbelievably, the wind increases. The radio announcer, Michelle, announces that winds over 200 km per hour have been measured. She interviews people who tell of roads being washed away, trees blown over, roofs ripped off. A person calls to tell of a car washed off a bridge. and submerged up to the windows in a river that is rapidly rising. He asks that she call the police, to come and assist him. He will go and look if there are any people still in the car. Still later she announces that a baby has been born in a car in front of a police station, while the father was trying to convince the police to provide a Land Rover to take the mother to hospital.

The night passes, an interminable roaring darkness, with periodic trips to reinforce windows as the wind shifts. The veranda floods, the wind blowing the water against and under the bedroom door in a miniature waterspout. No towels are dry. The human mind, overloaded by the forces at play, closes down, and goes to bed, hoping that the cyclone will just go away.

Dawn comes, and now the wind is calming. Everywhere it looks like photographs of Delville Wood after battle. A palm tree, 20 metres from our TV room bas been snapped in two, without our hearing it. Everywhere shredded leaves are piled up. The sugar cane, fortunately still young, has not been blown down, but the leaves are stripped of green. On the road, power lines are strewn around. We try to contact our colleagues in the Hotel, and have to cut our way through fallen trees, and wade through flooded roads. Michelle, after 12 hours of broadcasting, salutes the country, and goes home.

Then to the office, as the cyclone warning is lifted at 09hOO. The roads are blocked every few kilometres by fallen trees, and we have to drag them aside, or cut branches to pass. Scenes from CNN as containers are strewn like matchboxes around the harbour. Cranes on two of the tower blocks under construction are wrapped around the buildings, as someone remarked, like climbing roses. The office block housing the Mission seems intact, ut the security guard is nowhere to be found.

One office block is particularly hard hit. The aluminium window frames are pushed into the building or ripped out. A friend that bas a computer business in that building which is completely wiped out. Computer boxes are scattered for more than a kilometre down the road.

Government offices are deserted. I try to reach the Foreign Ministry to find out what help is needed, but have to talk my way past a policeman who objects to the way I parked. I park to his satisfaction, and continue searching for someone to speak to. There is some activity at the Prime Minister's office. The policeman at the entrance assures me that there is nobody I could speak to. By this time I get a little hot under the collar of my T-shirt, and insist that I wish to establish contact between my Government and his Government about the cyclone damage. He feels that I am not dressed appropriately, and maybe I could return on Monday?

I meet a Deputy Minister, who is developing a Hydroponics project together with South African partners. The R3 million investment was due for handing over at end February, and they were ready to begin supplying lettuce to the market. Now, with his eyes brimming with tears, he tells me that they have to start from scratch, everything is destroyed.

A Creole who owns a beautifully varnished wooden pirogue stands next to where it is washed up on the beach, laughing. When I ask him what damage is, he points to a small hole on the side. Then he escribes how the boat dragged a path through the rocks, and how the bottom is pulped. "At least your house is safe?" He replies, still laughing, "No, it blew away last night at eight. Everything is gone, I picked up the TV set 200 metres down the road."

"And you are still laughing?"

"Well, I can't cry anymore."

Grand Bay is a scene of desolation. Yachts sunk, their masts protruding, pirogues buried in the sand, one shattered into pieces 20 cms across.

And the radio carries the information: another tropical depression, Ivy, is forming, and should at present speed reach Mauritius in four to five days' time.

Meintjeskop Courier Volume II/1994