Hurricane Fifi
Hurricane Fifi hit us close to midnight on the 17th of September, 1974. By us I mean Honduras. Personally I was going to soon be thirteen and my family was living in Utila, an island about 30 Kms north of the coast of Honduras. Utila is basically flat with a couple of very low hills. One of these hills is practically in the center of the town and is only about 50 feet tall. The house we lived in was on this hill. Most of the town was built right along the sea in a harbour which I believe is called East Harbour. In any case, the majority of the town left their seaside homes and moved to houses of friends or family that were further inland.
At that time only my Mother and I were on the island and two girls who were friends of ours decided to stay in our house. Around 5:00 p.m. from the hill we could already see very large waves rolling outside of the harbour which I think is less than a kilometer in length. Naturally energy was shut off, so I went to sleep around seven. At eleven the wind woke me, the hurricane was hitting us hard. It was the loudest noise I had ever heard. I got up and put on my clothes, shaking like gelatin, but I got over that quickly, I was actually excited.
We spent about three hours just listening to that wind, when suddenly it stopped. We had been hit by the center of the hurricane, not even a breath of air but you could feel the heaviness in the atmosphere. It was around two in the morning, I went out of the house and went down to town, a lot of people were about looking for damage. about ten or fifteen minutes later they just said ok let's go back to our shelters, the hurricane will be back in a couple of minutes hitting us from another direction. Well I went back home and sure enough it hit again, but I fell asleep at some moment.
I woke up around eight, my father had hired a small aircraft and overflew the island, saw nothing much had happened and threw a pack with the days newspapers. Now the island was hit directly but suffered very little damage, 12 old uninhabited houses were destroyed and a big new house that was being built was also completely destroyed. Otherwise all that happened were trees collapsed and one shrimp boat that was in the harbour was pushed about half a kilometer inland. I think it is still there.
But the newspapers showed us that all the north coast of Honduras had suffered enormous damage, at least 5,000 people dead, thousands disappeared, and material losses were huge. It was devastating. Of course we had dozens of people come to look at the newspapers.
This was the worst hurricane I have felt, we actually had a very close accident, right beside the house there was an old, huge guenop tree, it fell, luckily it fell downhill and not towards the house or else it would have fallen right on my room. It is incredible the noise the wind can make, but at least in the island the wind was the only problem, the harbour protected from waves and there is not even a stream on the island so no flooding.
But frankly it is the worst weather I have ever felt, and Fifi hit us only as a category 2 hurricane. Still the cost was enormous.
