‘WHAT are the five things you’ll take with you in an emergency evacuation?’

It wasn’t an emergency and it wasn’t yet an evacuation. There were still four days before Hurri­cane Florence was to make landfall in North and South Carolina. Yet many locals found themselves increasingly asking this question on repeat as the storm drew near. We, a family of three, were amongst them.

We Googled, asked neighbours, asked the gentleman eighth in line before us at the grocery store with a cart full of organic baby purees and an eight-month-old infant in tow. Everyone had a similar list: passports, identification, degrees, birth certificates for the children. Then there were laptops, phones and chargers, valuables such as jewellery, wedding rings, cameras/lenses, hard drives and data travellers, irreplaceable memorabilia such as art or signed cricket bats or wedding invites. By the time we were done making ours, the list amounted to way over five.

In the meanwhile, Florence was picking up categories and turning into a thundering, roaring, monstrous hurricane coming right at the Carolinas.

We, like many others in the neighbourhood lining up at local grocery and hardware stores in preparation, felt well-equipped and ready for what was to come. The pantry was stocked, the freezer was full of ice-packs and milk to thaw when power went out. Torches were placed in all the often-used areas of the house along with extra batteries. Outdoor furniture and anything else that could be picked up by hurricane winds was moved indoors so that it didn’t smash into windows when the storm hits. Windows, garages and other openings were sealed shut ahead of landfall.

In about the next 15 hours or so, however, after watching a news update on YouTube, we found ourselves outside a car rental agency, with everything important in and to our life packed away in four big and small suitcases. Not everything, still. Almost everything.

Standing in queue at the rental, the events of the night before started to come back to us: hurriedly rolling expensive rugs on the lower floor, gathering our daughter’s toys in a mesh laundry basket, throwing things in and pulling them out of suitcases multiple times in a perpetual state of indecision. As time passed, it became very clear how every person in that queue had a somewhat similar tale of the day before. Maybe everyone was truly petrified and panicked but trying not to make it too obvious. It was almost frightening to observe how people were travelling with far more luggage than they normally do — their lives and all that they held valuable packed in a bunch of suitcases.

As the storm neared, the safety of people and homes alike became increasingly uncertain. With no Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine standing tall on the coast to redirect the raging behemoth, whoever could, had to run.

Over a million people along nearly the entire coasts of North and South Carolina were under mandatory evacuation orders by the US government ahead of the hurricane. Many more were being compelled to voluntarily evacuate at-risk areas in the vicinity of the coast.

Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on September 14th at 7:15am EST, exactly 19 hours after we left our hometown of Durham, North Carolina, by car to go west — away from the storm. In our absence, Florence lashed the coast with wind speed up to 92mph, according to the National Hurricane Centre. With landfall coinciding with the highest lunar tide of the year, producing a storm surge of up to 18 feet, the coast was tormented with pounding rain and heavy flooding. The coastal cities of Wilmington and New Bern, North Carolina, bore most of the brunt and were cut off entirely from the rest of the mainland by floodwaters. The hurricane also spawned tornadoes in various places along its path causing record-breaking rainfall, with more than 30 inches measured in some locations. With numbers still coming in, at least 45 deaths have been attributed to Florence, with damage currently estimated at more than $38 billion.

We, however, returned to dry floors, switches that turned on, warm water in the shower and a very cold freezer four days after landfall. Somehow, surprisingly, the storm had almost completely missed our hometown of Durham. There were remnant winds and rain, some flooding and inconvenience, a tree here and a pole there, but our plane landed on dry land.

In the 16-minute ride from the local airport back to our home, there was nothing to say or ask. There was relief, amazement, shock — and then sadness, horror, pain for all those sitting on rooftops, holding torchlights to their chests, with their lives, memories, loved ones and pets drowning and floating beneath them. It felt selfish and heartless to be thankful to not be in their place, to be free of suffering and loss and to not need rescuing. And yet here we were. Unnervingly, thankful.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2018