Caribbean braces for nasty hurricane season

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: Reaching for a pungent potion of solvent, wood sealer and perfume, Olga Santiago Ocana advises how to ward off bad spirits during a hurricane season that forecasters warn could be busier than ever.

In a shop packed with bundles of herbs, candles, beads and other paraphernalia of Santeria, the Afro-Caribbean religion, Santiago tells a client to sprinkle the anti-hurricane elixir around the home. “Every time there’s a hurricane, people rush to buy this,” she says in her “botanica,” a shop where people buy charms and potions. If forecasters are right, she may be busier than ever. Due to warmer sea-surface temperatures, forecasters from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict between six and nine hurricanes this Atlantic hurricane season, which begins today and runs through November 30. Last year, forecasters predicted at least six hurricanes. There were four, with one hitting the US coastline and two lashing the Caribbean. “This year, the increased activity foreseen in the Atlantic basin should increase the probability (by) 30 percent of US and Caribbean landfall,” said Phil Klotzbach, a forecaster at Colorado State University.

The uncertainty hurricane season brings each year has helped shape the Caribbean’s culture. The word “hurricane” comes from the Taino and Arawak Indian belief that the mighty storms were the manifestation of the god Jurakan. Hurakan also was the ancient Mayan god of wind and storm. The belief that supernatural beings were responsible for the storms continued long after the Tainos were exterminated by wars and diseases brought by European conquerors. During the 16th century, as Catholicism spread through the Caribbean, a special prayer begged God to “spare houses from the evil spirits and the malignant storms and winds.” The Vatican removed the prayer when it modernised the Roman Catholic liturgy in 1965, said Edwin Miner Sola, author of “History of the Hurricanes in Puerto Rico.” Around the same time, US meteorologists started giving storms female names in alphabetical order, a practice amended years later to include men’s names.

In earlier centuries, hurricanes had been named for the saint’s day on which they struck. Spanish —speaking islands continued naming the storms after saints until 1960, leading to some storms having two names, according to Miner Sola’s book. Hurricane Betsy in 1956 was called Santa Clara in Puerto Rico, while islanders dubbed Donna, the hurricane that hit in 1960, San Lorenzo. Some say the storms have shaped the Caribbean psyche over generations. In Cuba, hurricanes have helped produce “a sense of instability and unpredictability of life, a philosophy of life, a high tolerance for enduring catastrophes,” said Louis Perez, who teaches Cuban history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cuba gets hit more than other islands, mostly because it is the largest in the region. Caribbean islands were battered by a series of deadly hurricanes between 1995 and 2001 but have seen relatively few since. Cuba suffered heavy damage from Isidore and Lily last year, and in 2001 it endured even heavier losses from Michelle, which killed five people on the island and 12 others elsewhere in the region. One of the deadliest hurricanes was Flora, in 1963, which killed more than 7,000 people — mostly in Haiti and Cuba. Hurricane San Ciriaco killed more than 3,000 people in Puerto Rico in 1899.

The prelude to a hurricane is an eerie silence as the sky turns black. Then comes the shrieking maelstrom of wind and rain, sowing terror with banshee-like wails. Some storms can batter an island for 12 hours or more. They tear off roofs, uproot trees, topple utility poles, flood homes and businesses, rip the pavement from roads and block them with debris such as a refrigerator, a TV cable dish, lawn furniture, someone’s precious photos. In a city like San Juan, population one million, high-rise sea-front condominums sway when winds top 100 mph (160 kph), and highways become raging rivers with cars swept along like boats. Boat owners rush to secure their craft in “hurricane holes,” but even these are not safe in a severe storm that will tear vessels from their anchors and bash them into firewood. Hurricanes wreak havoc on the ecology, stripping white sand from beaches, destroying eggs of endangered species such as leatherback turtles, leaving trees denuded and smashing fragile coral reefs. For weeks after, islanders suffer with no electricity, no running water and a scarcity of fresh food as supermarkets throw out spoiled supplies.

Economically this tourist-dependent area can pay the cost for years. Some hotels never have been rebuilt since damage from hurricanes in 1995 and 1996. Some insurance companies have refused to do business in hurricane-prone areas, while others increased rates by 100 percent and more. Hurricanes also work their way into the region’s art. Puerto Rican writer Luis Pales Matos, in his poem “The Hurricane,” compared the powerful storms to a musician drawing open a “fierce accordion of winds.” The Puerto Rican folk song “Temporal” tells a coming storm to turn away, rather like the nursery rhyme ordering the rain away. Jimmy Buffet sings of his need for a Bloody Mary in “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season.” A bottle of rum is more in order in the Caribbean, where many islanders hold hurricane fetes, inviting friends over and partying away the hours they’re forced to spend enclosed in boarded up homes. For centuries, hurricanes caught people off-guard. But technology has helped demystify the storms. Now, forecasters can give warnings days ahead of time, allowing people to escape danger, protect property and lay in supplies against shop closures and utility outages. “I listen to the radio and I watch television for the weather forecast,” said Johnny Correa, who lost a house to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. “I also keep water and food supplies.” Among those supplies, for the minority of Puerto Ricans who adhere to Santeria, are anti-hurricane potions and offerings for personal saints. “People rush to buy these candles and soap just like they buy sheets of plywood and nails,” said the Santeria shop owner Santiago. “You have to believe in it.”