Life in Playa

It seems to be that time of year again…

Last week, up until Monday afternoon even, we were feeling the effects of Tropical Storm Arthur here in Playa Del Carmen.  I wasn’t even aware of the “tropical storm” part of it all until different friends and family from the US started to call me to ask if I was weathering the storm OK.  It is funny, I just thought it was typical June weather on the Yucatan Peninsula.  Anyway, I figured I would write a little bit about hurricane season and my experience with hurricane preparedness.

I got to Playa Del Carmen about a month after Hurricane Wilma ripped through here so I (thankfully) didn’t get that experience, but I got to hear lots of horror stories about Wilma and got to see the damage that was done that hadn’t been cleaned up yet.  I did on the other hand get to be here for Hurricane Dean, which was not much of a hurricane.

When Dean rolled up most people around here expected her to miss us, so a lot of people waited until the last minute to make the hurricane preparations.  The weekend before the hurricane was supposed to hit everyone went into frenzy mode of finding plywood and getting it up on.  The stores were packed, the prices of plywood doubled, and the “fletes” or rentable pickup trucks were backed up for hours or days.  It was a mess, when I finally got the go ahead from all of the owners of the condos I administer the line for plywood was a couple of hours.  When I got the plywood and arranged a delivery, through a furniture moving service, the next step was getting guys to help me put it up.  At the time, luckily, I was managing a construction in the Ejido and I pulled all of the workers off of there to put up plywood in various different locations.  It seems like a small task putting up a few sheets of plywood, but it ended up being a lot of work.  We slapped up 50+ boards over the three day period, sometimes having to really get creative because of tight working conditions and some irregular constructions.  In some places we couldn’t fit the plywood through the doors or windows so we hauled it to the second and third floors with rope and ladders, some doorways were too big even for 2 sheets of plywood so we had to get creative with a third piece, even some places we only had marble door frames so nails or screws were out of the question.

After two days of getting the plywood put up in various locations we were mostly done, I took a couple of guys with me to my home to get my plywood ready and sent the rest of the crew back to the construction site, where they also lived, so they could make the proper arrangements there as well.  My apartment was the most challenging for them because it had a 4meter X 3meter glass wall in a balcony so there was no place to nail to and technique we had used earlier to prop the wood up with 2×4′s wasn’t going to work either.  One of the lead guys came up with the idea of building a freestanding wood frame that wedged tightly against the side walls and then covering the wood frame with plywood.  It looked like a framed in wall like they use in the US to build houses.  After this problem was taken care of the next step was to figure out how to cover the only entrance to my apartment, which was a sliding door.  Nailing up plywood wouldn’t work there because then I would not be able to get in and out easily.  They came up with another ingenious invention, a sliding door made out of plywood and 2×4′s, using the 2×4′s as tracks for the plywood to slide on, then when it was time to shut the door I could slide it shut and then secure it to the tracks using wire ties like they use on concrete forms.

We then made a run the the grocery store, stocking up on water, tuna, candles, playing cards, etc.  I had heard that before Wilma the grocery stores started running out of food, but I didn’t notice that much at walmart.  When I went to drop off the guys at their home they had moved all of the portable water containers inside and were filling them with water, this included a big 2500liter tinaco(big black water containers you see on roofs in Mexico) that we had.  They had tied the tinaco on the roof down with various cords and ropes so that it would not blow away in the storm.  They suggested that I do the same to the tinaco where I lived.  Before the storm hit I made sure that the tinacos on the roofs were full and that the cistern was filled as full as I could get it.

At the time my gas tank, as well as the gas tanks from a few other apartments in the building were loose, attached via hose through a hole in the kitchen wall.  I disconnected the tanks and stored them so that they would not blow away in case of a storm.  I attached a 10-kilo gas tank inside my kitchen so that I could still cook during the storm, though I don’t really suggest this because it can really be unsafe in case of a fire.

I filled up some 5-gallon buckets with water and put them in the shower, so that I would have water to flush and wash with if the tinaco ran out of water.  I stored all of my important documents in large ziplock bags and made sure that anything that I didn’t want damaged by water was off the ground.

Then I waited.

That night the wind started to pick up and sometime early that morning the light went out.  I remember getting up to go to the bathroom and thinking how absolutely inky dark the house was all boarded up.  The wind howled pretty good and the plywood occasionally banged in the wind but overall it held up pretty well.  When the wind died down I opened up the sliding plywood door to survey the damage.  Playa was pretty much untouched, there were some things scattered around the streets but overall no big deal.

My cell phone wasn’t working so I couldn’t immediately check on the damage in the other buildings, but I had a little bit of work to do in the building I was in.  One of the tinacos had drained, one of the toilets was running or something, so the water drained out pretty quick.  We dipped water out of the cistern until the power came back on, no big deal really.

Two of my buildings only had hydro-pneumatic water systems, i.e. no tinacos or water storage on top, so without power there was no water in the building.  Lomas Mariposas has a pool so the tenants there just dipped pool water out to flush their toilets and wash with.  The other building was stuck without water, which in a false alarm hurricane like this is no problem, but after a real disaster a the building would not have water for a while.

The next day I started to take the plywood down, that ended up being the hardest part of the whole ordeal.  The excitement of the upcoming hurricane kind of made putting up the plywood tolerable, but the taking it down just seemed to drag on and on.  Then we had to patch the wholes left in the cement and repaint everything.  Repair from the protection took much longer than putting it up. 

Now, what do you do with 50+ pieces of plywood spread out between 3 buildings?  In the building where I live we put the plywood on the roof and nailed the pieces together, making a large heavy block of wood that would be available in case of another hurricane.  In Mariposas we stacked the pieces and screwed them together, this time in the parking area of the building in an unused parking space.  In Las Olas we had a space under the building that we converted into a bodega so we could put everyone’s plywood in there.  I guess we are prepared for next time.

This year I recommended to all of the condo owners that they install hurricane shutters.  Some of the property managers we work with are telling their clients that if they don’t install hurricane shutters they will be unprotected during the next hurricane.  I don’t know how strictly they will adhere to this rule, but for my clients I will still install plywood if it is absolutely necessary.  I also suggested to the clients in the buildings that have hydro-pneumatic water systems(no tinacos) that they install a backup type system where possible, a couple of tinacos on the roof will supply a building for a day or so if the tenants are careful with there water consumption.

I live in a different apartment now, it will be less hassle this time to install my own protection.  I plan to prefit the plywood to the door and have it predrilled and install anchors in the concrete so there is no drilling or nailing involved, just a few screws and nothing more.  We used nails during Dean to hold up the plywood, but when we took the wood down it left gaping holes in the cement.  We tried anchorless screws but found out that they were very hard to get to work properly and they also tended to break off when removed, therefore leaving a piece of metal that has to be chipped off later.

Everything else I think will be about the same for the next hurricane, lots of water and lots of food.  I really didn’t feel like I lacked for anything during Dean, but I am sure there is something I am missing.  I don’t look forward to a hurricane, but I heard so many stories about the comradarie that happened in Playa Del Carmen after Hurricane Wilma, so I am sure that whatever happens everything will be all right.  People tell stories about after-hurricane parties where everyone brings something that they stocked up on, sharing what they have with others.  Not so bad I guess.