Fire Devastates Honduran Comunity

[waross]

Fire devastates Honduras' Caribbean resort island of Guanaja
Reuters

Link
The fire is in Bonacca Town, not on the actual island of Guanaja.
Bonacca is built on a coral reef or cay about 1500 feet offshore from the north island of Guanaja.
There are no roads, only footpaths. The homes, many wood frame, are clustered tightly together.
There is no fire fighting organization or equipment. The fire would have been first fought by unorganized volunteers.
The power plant on the North Island will have cut the feeder to the key at the first report of fire.
The population of Bonacca town is about 5000 persons.
No loss of life reported but 90 homes destroyed and an additional 120 damaged.

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Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

I visited Bonnaca way back in 1984. Quite a unique place. Yeah, everything is wood and built very close together. Sorry to hear about the fire.

 

[waross]

Bayman Bay Resort, 1503?


--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[waross]

Here is what Bonacca Town looks like:

Here is Bonacca in relation to part of the island of Guanaja:

Here is the whole island of Guanaja. Bonacca is hardly more than a dot, but when I was working there, almost 1/2 of the population of Guanaja lived in Bonacca Town.

Remember Hurricane Mitch?
Hurricane Mitch stalled over Guanaja and hit the island three times in three days.
I talked to a boat owner who had lost his boat, his home and all his possessions. He and his family were unharmed, but had only the clothes that they were wearing.
The island has had its share of tragedy.
The people there are incredibly resilient.
I talked to two boat owners who had small weather stations at their homes. Both were seeing wind speeds of about 230 mph when the wind took down their weather stations.
No-one on the island was able to determine the peak wind speeds.
When the wind stopped, our little utility had only three power poles left standing in the entire system. All of our generators were soaked with brackish water.
I tested one generator, megger test, shorted to ground. I tried an Ohmmeter test. The reading changed when I reversed the leads.
I tried a low voltage tset. The insulation, saturated with brackish water was acting as an electrolyte. The copper windings and the iron core were acting as electrodes and were acting as a rudimentary battery.



--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

Yes. Bayman Bay. Couldn't remember the name. Food was great there. Broke a rib when I fell off the dock and hit the bow of the dive boat before splashdown. Diving the rest of the trip was a bit painful. Had to float the tanks before getting back in the boat. Went for Easter week. LANSA pilot didn't show up for the flight back (a DC3 and live chickens) and I had to hitch a ride with the UN to San Pedro Sula. Also got a taste for the worst coffee in the world, after the all night processions, fire works and church bell ringing. Once you get used to the coffee, it's not all that bad. Plenty of milk and sugar. Took the Sailfish out too far, got caught in the leeward winds at the same time I realised the boat was leaking. A real struggle to get back. Won big in the casino too. A memorable adventure. I still think I meet Long John Silver there, or certainly his reincarnation. Did they ever pave the runway? Roatan got quite popular a few years later.

 

[waross]

Coffee. I think that it is strong and bitter by design. My observation was that it was a vehicle to facilitate the ingestion of vast amounts of sugar.
I did a lot of work at Bayman Bay Club. I upgraded the distribution system to all of the cabins.
I was having breakfast in La Ceiba with a friend when the owner of Bayman bay came into the restaurant. They knew each other and so Tom joined us.
When the owner found out that I did electrical work, he had me on the next pane to Guanaja. I had lunch at the club.
His parting words:
"Don't worry. When you get to Guanaja, look for VivaLee. She will take you to the club."
Yes the runway was paved by then. The terminal was a small grass shack with a sign proclaiming;
"Concourse 1."
I found VivaLee, a middle aged lady who operated a water taxi.
On the way to the club, a speed boat came alongside and the driver started shouting at me;
"Quit fkkking my wife."
This was repeated a number of times as the speed boat kept a not quite straight line beside us.
Then the speed boat pulled away and charted a zig-zag course back the way he had come.
VivaLee shook her head;
"It's the drink. He has no mind left."
It turned out that I had been mistaken for someone who owed VivaLee money and the accusation was monetary, not sexual.
Quite an introduction to a new project.
And the adventure continued.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

Adventures just happen all by themselves there. It's impossible to stay out of their way. One day I'll get around to telling the story about getting deported from Colombia and then mistakenly crossing the border back in. Then trying to get back to VN without being detected to register my corrected visa ... the one with a work permit. And that was the least complicated one.

Bayman was a nice setup. A classic Caribe dive site. Is it still there? It looks like it's deserted now, or severely overgrown. That's where I saw my first on demand, gas water heater. I thought that was a great invention. I tried to find them in the States. Never found one..

I used to teach scuba back then and did quite a bit of travel in CentralA, from Cozumel on down.

 

[waross]

When I started to work at Batman Bay, it was just at the end of the good times.
A falling out with a dive club that had sent a lot of divers there.
Dwindling bookings, mismanagement leading to further reduced bookings.
The food quality deteriorated alarmingly.
The strain on management seemed to result in even worse management.
Hurricane Mitch was the last straw.
I understand that the bank took it over and lost money as well.
There are more details and a couple of failed scams as well.
Sad. It was a great location with great potential.

The on demand gas heaters: When I designed the site distribution I explained the current demand that electric on-demand heaters would cause and the greatly increased price of an installation to accommodate future electric on-demand heaters.
I was promised that electric heaters would never be considered.
A customers promise is right up there with "The checks in the mail."
A later manager had to replace the on-demand heater in her cabin, at the end of a long feeder.
Electric was cheaper than gas. When she had a shower it would often take out the breaker for about six cabins.
I think that they went with a typically Honduran solution; A grossly oversized feeder breaker.
(This is not prejudice. This comment is the result of about 15 years of observations.)

Don't Stop the Carnival is a 1965 novel by American writer Herman Wouk

Don't Stop the Carnival revolves around the lead character of Norman Paperman. He is the middle-aged New York City press agent who leaves the noise and safety of the big city and runs away to a (fictional) Caribbean island to redeem and reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. The result is a satirical tale of tropical disaster.[2]

A hilarious book that proceeds from disaster to disaster.
Almost every disaster in the book had a parallel either at Bayman Bay or on Guanaja.
Wiki

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[1503-44]

Yeah, it looked pretty deserted. As I said, a classic Caribe dive site. Good things never seem to last. It can be a difficult place. The Panama Canal almost destroyed 19th century French society. The US spent 20yrs there. One problem after another. Not for the faint of heart. Nothing seems to go exactly as planned. I was going to stay in VN, but then I saw that Chavez was gaining popularity and thought twice about that plan. There are lots of Venezuelans here for the same reason.