At the time, my ex was attending conferences in Hawaii, my daughter and I were at home, I got a call from my ex's friend. When we were talking, I heard some loud noises, I thought they came from people who were doing something outside of our building. later the noises got more frequent, my heart start to tremble, I couldn't concentrate on talking, I couldn't help to say: "oh my, what's wrong, I don't know what is happening outside..." the guy asked me if I were okay, I said: "yes, I am ok." Then we said good bye. The call was from Ottawa, so the guy didn't know why I made a fuss at the time I guess.
It is very dark outside, I couldn't really see what was going on, but I soon realized this was a storm. After a short period of time, rain started to get into our rooms through 2 layers of windows. Suddenly power was cut off, and it came dark everywhere...I start to looking for candles...fortunately I touched some small birthday candles and our lighter. My daughter was in her room at the time, didn't move. In darkness, I tried to talk to her calmly, she was ok too. I told her go to sleep, then she went to bed.
I couldn't sleep, cus our floor had already flooded. I remember that till 5 o'clock in the next morning, all I could do was absorbing the rainwater by mop. I finished using those small candles much earlier. My eyes adapted the dark environment gradually, I could go back and forth to bathroom to pour the rainwater out of that small bucket...
Amazing thing was my daughter had slept very well that night:)
There were no open stores or electricity for cooking for a week. fortunately our fridge was not empty. I am still very proud of that I found a way to cook. We had one and half bottle of 75%-concentrate alcohol at home. I poured it in a small stainless bowl to about 1/3 of the bowl's volume, put a steaming rock around the bowl, and then put cookware on the top. Shakily, I managed to light a fire.Wow, it had worked well... the food cooked! When I had finished using that alcohol, I replaced it with Chinese cooking wine, it had almost the same effect! My ex was in Hawaii during the entire time. I just told him we had hurricane and no power and I made my own fire to cook ...
I remember that some of the broken trees in my pics were much thicker than those ones. The number of trees
in the Halifax public garden were reduced by a lot after that storm.There were storms during later years, but it seems that I haven't felt anything like I had experienced in 2003 again.
