We did, we were warned about Storm Ciarán, unlike other great storms of 1987 and 1999; we knew it was coming. Storms hit the Channel Islands (14 miles off coast of France and 100 south of UK) on a fairly regular basis. We’re just a handful of small islands always at the mercy of weather, milder than the UK but liable to be buffeted about by winds, coming mainly from the southwest, up from the Bay of Biscay, turning right at Finisterre. Living on the south coast of the Island, as I do, with only a dual carriage way separating me from the third highest tides in the world, I expect high winds to hurl the spring tide over the sea wall.
However, 1st and 2nd November was something else. We knew it was coming and preparations were made days before. Giant sized sandbags were hoisted into place along the coast on the most vulnerable stretches and those roads were closed, windows were tightly shut, and garden furniture stashed safely. My window cleaners came on Tuesday. I had lovely shiny windows for a day and afterwards they looked like they had been sandblasted, but that’s small beer compared with windows blown in, roofs blown off and cars buried under rubble in other parts of the island.
Precautions included closing the airport, schools, the hospital, (to all but emergencies), and all sailings were cancelled. The news from the port was that the fast ferries to France and the UK may not start again until the following Tuesday. The faithful freighters are made of sterner stuff and were running again by the Friday post-storm, bringing fresh produce to the islands. The airport opened Friday afternoon after a clean-up operation enabled it to become compliant and safe.
A weird phenomenon took over in the days before the storm. As soon as it was announced that shops and offices would close on the Thursday, the collective siege mentality, or is it just an island mentality, took over and there were queues around supermarkets, blocking roads. The shelves emptied, apparently even sparking a near fight over the last loaf in one establishment! And that’s for one day, surely people have got freezers and tin cupboards. In mitigation, I’m guessing some thought that the boats might not get in for days and therefore had to stock up, but still…
And so we get to the storm itself, which I think, in weeks to come when we know the full extent of the damage and the cost, will be deemed worse than the great storm of 1987, which did much damage all over the island, and certainly worse than 1999. Some cottages in this area are below sea level and in the 1999 storm, a lady who lived in a cottage next to my aunt had to be rescued through her window as the water had risen to over four feet. She was watching Coronation Street at the time and hadn’t noticed the tide coming over the wall. The firemen who found her, knocked on the window, told her not to open her door and pulled her out. They carried her to the pub across the road where the landlord was accommodating displaced persons. As she thanked the firemen, she remembered her cat was still in the cottage. The firemen duly went off to rescue the cat, which, when they pulled it out of the living room, was found to be an ancient, ragged looking, one-eared moggie, luxuriating in the name of ‘Lucky’.
The night before the storm some good friends had helped me stash the garden furniture safely. I may have watched an aerial ballet of chairs if they’d been left out. The way into my garden is via the fire escape. (I’m on the first and second floors). Made of wood it rots and has to be replaced regularly, but this year I decided to bite the bullet and have it replaced with galvanised steel. The contractors, dressed in hoodies and jeans, arrived on pre-storm Tuesday, dismantled the old one, which more or less dismantled itself, so rotten was it. In pouring rain they started to build the new one, and left as it got dark.
I expected them back on the Wednesday morning as the storm was predicted to arrive in the evening. The steps remained unfinished for some days, so I was effectively cut off from the garden, which was no bad thing. The wind and rain since the storm has been relentless, especially at night when everything rattles up on the second floor, where some years ago I thought it would be a wonderful idea to replace the bedroom wall facing the sea with a double-glazed window. Brilliant decision – too hot in the summer and bears the brunt of the worst of the weather in the winter. I knew as the wind got up in the afternoon that it would be too noisy to sleep up there, so I made up a bed in the lounge and managed an hour’s sleep, before I was woken by the wind and rain hammering at the French windows.
Suddenly giants started hurling rocks at the window. It was terrifying. I was fixed in place, didn’t dare look outside. I shut my eyes and put my head under the duvet. Even then I still saw, through closed eyelids and a duvet, the brightest flash of light ever, followed by a gunshot. After repeats of the light and the shots I realised that it was thunder and lightning, but not as I’d ever heard it before. I expect thunder to rumble around with various notes, but this was a single sharp crack right overhead. The lightning lit up the whole sky, which this photo, which I can’t caption, clearly shows.
The giants, after a mercifully short time, tired of using my windows for target practice with hailstones the size of golf balls and bigger, and they turned back into driving rain.
However there was no sleep after that for a couple of hours. Luckily for me when the highest winds - 104mph - hit at 5am, I was asleep and slept until 6:30am, for which I’m very grateful. My neighbour was not so fortunate. The hailstones shattered the outside pane of glass in her double-glazed porch. On our terrace of four houses, we all have tiles missing or broken, but nothing that needs immediate attention.
On the east side of the island, others had a much worse time. Houses were partly demolished or lost roofs, cars were tossed into the air, or had windows smashed by hailstones, and hundreds of trees were brought down. The cause of the destruction appears to have been a mini-tornado which only hit a small part of the island, and although only a couple of miles away, my neighbourhood escaped the worst of it. One person described hearing dogs barking, car alarms blaring, wind howling and general mayhem breaking out as roofs flew and windows shattered.
The emergency services had set up a command centre and were inundated with calls. Support was provided all night and during the days following the storm. Some families will need that support for months to come. The Honorary Police (unpaid volunteers) were on duty all night looking out for the community.
The next morning listening to the local news I realised I’d got off lightly. Some forty families were left homeless. Later in the day the wind started to drop, and I went outside to assess any damage. I met neighbours doing the same and we all agreed it had been an awful night but the old clichés – ‘We were lucky’ and ‘It could have been a lot worse,’ – kept coming up so we had a cup of tea, shared experiences and felt better.
On Friday the sea calmed, the freighters got in and fresh food was presumably delivered, but when the shops reopened on Friday, the bread shelves in supermarkets emptied out as soon as the delivery was made. The airport opened on Friday afternoon after infrastructure and systems damage was assessed and made safe.
When I meet people in town, the talk is of the storm, no-one says ‘How are you?’, anymore. The greeting since then is ‘Did you have any damage?’ We should be used to storms and huge tides here and we are, in fact we’ve had stormy nights since the storm, but Ciarán was something else. It serves to remind us that our environment is fragile and becoming more vulnerable with climate change and global warming. It also showed how a community can come together to firstly, prepare to minimise the effect of the storm on the population and infrastructure, and secondly to support those who have been affected. We’re quick to criticise our little Government, but on this occasion they should be praised, not least for the way they cleared the main roads to enable the community to get back to work and school speedily. I thank them and hope they won’t be called upon to perform those tasks for at least another 35 years.
Wow Sue, I really felt like I was living through Storm Ciaran with you. That photo of your world lit up by lightning was crazy! Glad you stayed safe xx
I hope you don’t experience a story of this kind for 35 years or a lot more too Sue 🙏 Sorry to see what ye went through. Mother Nature can be so cruel in her own way even if she doesn’t mean to be. So much damage 💔Glad you got this Substack up & out there 🫶