Into the eye of the hurricane - my experience of 130mph storm Fabian which struck Bermuda in 2003

I KNEW of Bermuda's propensity for hurricanes when I left England to start work on the Island's national newspaper, The Royal Gazette.

And so, being an adventurous kind of chap, part of me was quite keen to witness one up close and personal.

"Wouldn't it be great," I told a seasoned Bermudian colleague of mine, "to sit through a really bad one and say you'd survived. That would be something to tell the grandkids."

I didn't quite get the response I had expected.

"Don't be so f****** stupid," came the reply. "You don't ever want to experience anything like that."

To be honest, I thought the reaction was a little over the top. That was until Friday, September 5, 2003, a day that will live long in my memory and even longer in the memories of those who lost loved ones during those 24 hours.

We had been given plenty of warnings - the National Hurricane Center in Miami had been tracking the storm for days, watching it build from a tropical storm and then into a hurricane when its windspeed reached the critical mark of 74mph.

As a result, Bermuda's 60,000-plus residents had plenty of time to prepare.

Unlike in the US, leaving en masse was not an option. On an island only 21 miles by a mile wide, there is nowhere to hide. Those who wanted to were able to get flights out, but for 99 per cent of the population it was a case of crossing your fingers and riding it out as best you could.

Each house has huge tanks of water underneath as there is no piped supply on the island, so people frantically stocked up as the weather system, now named Hurricane Fabian, approached.

My wife Karen, seven months' pregnant at the time, and I filled the bath and other utensils to the brim so that when the inevitable power cut came we would be able to wash and flush the toilet. We stocked up on batteries, non-perishable food and perhaps, most importantly, beer.

Garden furniture was secured as best we could behind our apartment. Our mopeds, Bermuda's number one form of transport, were brought in off the road.

As the skies darkened and the winds picked up we made sure the windows were closed tight, the dog was indoors and we prepared to await the inevitable.

In the intervening period, those tracking the storm were predicting the eye would come within touching distance of the shore. This meant Bermuda would be in its right-hand quadrant, the most powerful section being the North-East, due to the counter clockwise motion around its centre of circulation.

As luck - bad, in this instance - would have it, the predictions were entirely correct. Fabian was only 50 miles away, practically a direct hit in meteorological terms.

Roads were now deserted, boats on the bay began bobbing energetically and then rocking on their moorings, trees began to sway.

Phone calls were made home in an effort to reassure relatives who were following the events on the Internet, but in the middle of one conversation, the lines went down. This was it.

The winds increased hour on hour until they reached sustained speeds of 117mph with gusts close to 130mph. Watching from our windows we could see debris flying by; branches, bits of roofing, enough to do you serious damage if you were hit.

I remember being nervous but also feeling slightly excited, the adrenaline kicking in as the storm gathered pace. But then came some news which brought everything into perspective.

The Government's emergency broadcasting facility reported that the Causeway, a stone bridge that connects the main island to an area known as St David's, had collapsed.

Several police officers, attempting to rescue some islanders, were missing. It later transpired two officers and two civilians had died in the Atlantic's waters.

Back at home, after what felt like an eternity, the winds began to subside. But this was not the end, merely a cruel interval.

Because Fabian had come so close the island, we were now in the eye of the storm.

Karen and I took the opportunity to quickly move to our landlord's house next door. All of Bermuda's properties are built out of stone and are particularly sturdy, but we just felt we wanted safety in numbers.

All of a sudden, the winds that had been going right to left began to blow left to right.

Trees that had taken as much of a battering as they could one way, now had their roots being tested in the opposite direction. Many could no longer withstand the hurricane's fury and submitted to its power. Thankfully, and to this day I don't know how, they all fell parallel to the house, leaving the property largely unscathed.

Fabian moved away from Bermuda by the evening but its impact was to be felt long after its winds had died.

The following morning, being journalists, Karen and I went out to survey the island and report on the many stories; the narrow escapes, the tales of what might have been and, of course, the tragedies. It was like we had been transported to a different place - a war zone, in fact.

Power was down everywhere, trees littered the roads, roofs were missing from houses, boats were found in people's gardens, one even ended up in the bedroom of a local hotel. No one and nowhere had been left untouched.

As I stood on the shore and looked at the debris all around, I knew I could now say I had survived the wrath of Mother Nature.

An ambition had been achieved but if anyone told me now that they wanted to experience it for themselves my response would be the same as that of my more experienced colleague: "Don't be so ... stupid".