By now you may have heard about the horrendous storm that passed over San Felipe, Sunday, October 22,2000. The same storm dumped over six inches of rain in Arizona and by Tuesday was drenching west Texas.

Sunday was the last day of the fledgling San Felipe Jazz Festival. It had a slow start on Friday, when the musicians had difficulties checking into those hotels which had offered them free rooms. They were several hours behind their scheduled gigs for Friday. Saturday's increasing winds made playing on the Malecon difficult. That evening they played earlier than scheduled at various restaurants. We should have suspected bad weather when over 30 boats were seen in the bay and surrounding waters that night. Sunday dawned with overcast skies as far as one could see. By 10AM the rain was pouring into our home and most others' homes, as well. The rain stopped and we continued sweeping water from our newly added rooms and patios. In the afternoon, the rains came again, this time with hailstones; we swept and mopped, again. The third onslaught in the evening left us too exhausted to give a damn. The shop vacuum had overheated several times and the water kept pouring through the ceiling, walls, and light fixtures. The electricity had gone out several times but, each time, returned in a few hours. I had unplugged all our electronic equipment. The windows on top and middle floors leaked from above. Water ran along the overhead sections of ceiling causing great bubbles of paint filled with water; it streamed through the ceiling fans; it poured from the bottom of several support columns. No way could we catch it all or sweep it out the doors as fast as it came.

I had been scanning those marine radio channels that are used by the retirees here. I learned that the road was gone between La Hacienda and the airport road. The Estrella River, a few kilometers south of us had overflowed and a carload of folks were trapped in an overturned car in the water. One neighbor couple was reporting leakage everywhere in their new roof. Another neighbor and I drove to the front of La Hacienda to check the damages to the streets and elsewhere. Over six cars were at the roadway waiting to get to town or further south. We took their word for the broken road at the arroyo near the airport road. One reported that the firemen were coming to fix the roadway. Oh sure, it was already getting dark.

Monday morning was overcast, but the clouds were moving away from us. A third neighbor rang the doorbell to tell us that my RV was about to fall through the street where the bricks had washed out below the wheels on the side of the street which goes downhill. The new drainpipes had broken in the cul-de-sac above our street. The water had gushed down the hill, into our street, overflowing the gutter, and washing away the bricks. My husband and I went to check the broken road by the airport and to see if our scheduled worker had gotten that far. We passed several of the cars which must have spent the night at the entrance of La Hacienda, under the entryway. Our worker was surveying the damage on the other side of a thirty-foot plus missing section of roadway. The two, five-foot diameter drainpipes which were supposed to allow the water to pass under the road from the creek had become clogged with debris. The water had washed around them on either side, removing all sand supporting the roadbed. Large pieces of road surface lay in the hole, beyond it into the desert, as well as, all along, beside the road for half a kilometer. Our worker said he knew a way over the sand dunes. After he left, a truckload of soldiers stopped at the break. They climbed down to the broken road and surveyed the scene, guns slung from their backs. They looked across to the top of the dunes where we could see several people digging their vehicles out of the sand. We hoped one of them was not our worker. The soldiers returned to their truck and backed away up to the airport road, and headed towards town. I backed down the road on our side until I could turn around and head back to La Hacienda.

We met our second neighbor with our worker in his car. Our worker had been the first to blaze a trail across the dunes and in an old Oldsmobile. We saw several four-wheel drive trucks and utility vehicles head out across the dunes. Later, when we were helping ourselves to a long board which appeared discarded beside one seldom used house, we talked to a driver who was returning from his jaunt across the dunes. He said the sand had been churned up, but was passable. One part had a sheer drop-off beside it. The trails could only be navigated by high-riding, all-terrain vehicles.

Our worker surveyed the broken street and large washed out gully beneath the RV. He got the large vehicle jack from a widowed neighbor. It is part of her husband's legacy which providently provides us with the right tool at the time of an emergency. We located discarded boards at several vacant homes, tied them to the back of my car, and dragged them back to the RV. After raising the back end of the RV, he put the long boards under the two tires now barely supported by the roadside gutter. He attached the hitch to the back of my Explorer and guided me back in order to make the connection. Several other neighbors including some others who seldom visit, watched as I pulled the RV to safety, onto solid street and around the cul-de-sac. Parking it across the street, was an exercise in shouting, cursing, and much maneuvering. Unfortunately, I drove over a neighbor's electric box in the sidewalk, crushing the lid and exposing the wires inside. I finally asked one of the bystanders to finish backing the RV into position, parallel and just behind the boat hull. I was thankful he was still speaking to us after all the yelling. After it had been leveled as much as possible with the one frozen and bent leveler leg, I was able to check the interior of the RV. Water stains were several inches up the interior walls. Opening the bathroom door, I discovered that the ventilator covers must have leaked. Then I knew why I had seen so much water dripping from the RV's underside.

One couple had come across the dunes. They said the soldiers were trying to level and pack a passage across the dunes and were also helping extract the unlucky vehicles from the deep sand. The second neighbor asked if I wanted to go across the dunes and into town with him. The electric bills were due!! Crossing the dunes in a four-wheel drive was a new experience for me. He seemed an old hand at such travel. How he knew which of the many tracks to follow amazed me. He was able to keep moving and avoid the unfortunate ones stuck in sand. I crossed my fingers as we went blindly around the large dune with the fifteen-foot drop just beside the path. It had deep ruts and soft sand; luckily, no one was coming from the other direction. We came to a truck-bed camper perched on top of the last high dunes, and saw the hard-packed trail down to solid roadway.

Once in town, we discovered that the ATM was not functioning and a line of 15 or more people waiting inside the BBV bank. At the electric company I had enough pesos to pay our bill and he got a two-week extension for paying his bills. In our fractured Spanish, we reported that there were several broken electric boxes at homes in La Hacienda, including one large exposed wire on the south side and asked that they send someone to repair them as soon as possible. A worker from The El Cortez Hotel stepped up and translated for us. He also said he would tell his friend, who is in the construction business, about the leaking roofs in La Hacienda. Shopping at Sinai (a grocery store) for milk and fruit, we met yet another neighbor who had crossed the dunes from La Hacienda. After checking with three hardware stores, I bought three tubes of silicone sealer and what may have been the last available roll of plastic sheeting in San Felipe. Stopping at The Net, we were told the connection to Mexicali was down and no e-mail was being sent or received.

Coming back across the dunes, we were pleased to see soldiers working with shovels, without guns for a change, and a backhoe with a scoop leveling the trail. After the curve with the sheer drop, we met a family shoveling sand to free their SUV and its trailer carrying two dune buggies. What was wrong with that picture? Plowing across the last field of soft sand, we were happy to strike the solid red brick road of La Hacienda.

In the afternoon, a neighbor took our two Mexican workers across the dunes to the "Pink Arches" (an incomplete development) where the maid’s car was parked. She had walked from there along the beach to get to one of the residents in La Hacienda. Although our worker's car tires were partially deflated, he did not want to risk driving home across the dunes' deteriorating trails.

Tuesday morning revealed a distant storm passing north east of us. We could see the black cloud reaching down to the Sea over Konsag Rock which is about 24 miles away. The sun was shinning here and we were drying out at last. We drove to the break in the rode to see if our worker was there but passed him and the maid driving just inside the entrance to La Hacienda. The break in the road had been filled with sand, a very, very temporary fix. The pictures I took do not show the enormity of the damages. Our worker is now putting more drain holes and enlarging the previous ones in the roof and patios. He discovered that the previous drain pipes has been placed only half-way into the holes, thus the some of the water had run down into the walls before it could enter the pipes. Two fellows arrived from the electric company and implied that the company would repair the top of the electric connection box. After telling us how to temporarily shore up the concrete conduit carrying our electricity, they left to review the damages on the south side of La Hacienda.

Although we worked as fast as possible, we were not ready for the rains which fell Friday night…….. Oh, oh!

Thank heavens for helpful neighbors and our Mexican friends.