There is something eerie about the hours before a hurricane. Everything seems to slow down, almost as if the world has frozen while the storm sucks the surrounding life into its bands of destruction. Then comes the rain. At first, it is simply constant. The clouds grow darker until daylight begins to resemble night and the sun seems to retreat, leaving us to watch the chaos unfold.

The wind begins to make the trees dance, softly at first. But with every gust, the violence increases. Branches bend. Palms strain. Loose objects begin to move. And eventually comes that unmistakable howl, the sound of sheer devastation moving through the darkness. Even the rain changes personality. What began as a blanket of water becomes sheets of stinging drops, driven sideways and pounding against everything in their path.

It is impossible to forget surviving a storm like Hurricane Ivan. Perhaps that is why, 22 years later, Ivan still finds its way into our conversations. It comes up at gatherings. It is mentioned almost immediately when a new system develops during hurricane season. And inevitably, every threatening storm is measured against it. The question is always the same: is it going to be another Ivan? For an entire generation of Caymanians and residents, Ivan became the benchmark.

On Sunday, 12 September 2004, the centre of Hurricane Ivan passed just south of Grand Cayman as a Category 4 hurricane. According to the US National Hurricane Center's report on the storm, its centre came within about 22 nautical miles (roughly 25 miles) south-south-west of George Town, and the island took sustained winds just below Category 5 strength. The island was battered for hours by destructive winds, torrential rain, enormous waves and devastating storm surge. We will never forget it.

September anxiety and calm

September already brings its own particular anxiety to Cayman. Back-to-school traffic returns, routines restart and, somewhere in the background, we know we are entering the heart of the period when the Atlantic is historically most active. Yet September 2026 feels strangely quiet. Five tropical storms have formed in the Atlantic this season - Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly and Edouard - but, according to the US National Hurricane Center, as of 9 September not one has become a hurricane.

That should not necessarily make us comfortable. In fact, perhaps it should do the opposite. There is an old lesson in the story of the boy who cried wolf. Raise the alarm often enough without consequence and eventually people stop reacting. Then, when the wolf finally appears, nobody is prepared to listen. Hurricane seasons can have the same effect.

The longer we go without a serious threat, the easier it becomes to push hurricane preparation further down the list. The shutters can wait. We will buy the water later. There will be plenty of batteries at the supermarket. The generator has not been started in a year, but surely it still works. We begin to believe that because nothing has happened, nothing will happen.

There was a version of that complacency before Ivan. We had watched storms tear through our Caribbean neighbours while Cayman seemed to escape again and again, sometimes with little more than rough seas, heavy rain and a story to tell the next morning. After enough close calls, it almost felt as though there was an invisible hand protecting these three little islands. Then Ivan came.

And for those who lived through what followed, the memories are strangely specific. If you still cannot look at a tin of corned beef without remembering September 2004, if saltine crackers lost their appeal somewhere around week two, or if the distant hum of a generator still transports you immediately back to those dark nights after Ivan, then you know. The heat. The mosquitoes. The endless cleanup. The generators. The darkness. The strange new geography of neighbourhoods where familiar landmarks had disappeared overnight.

Life after Ivan

But there is another question worth asking 22 years later. Could we handle it now? In 2004, we were nowhere near as connected as we are today. Losing electricity was miserable. Losing telephone service was frightening. But our entire lives had not yet migrated onto devices and into the cloud.

There were no WhatsApp family groups constantly checking in. No Instagram. No TikTok. No expectation that we could see exactly where everyone was at every moment. Work did not disappear because the Wi-Fi disappeared. Our children were not accustomed to entertainment arriving instantly through a screen.

Now imagine weeks, perhaps months, with unreliable electricity. No Wi-Fi. No streaming. No social media. And, God forbid, no phones. Imagine being truly disconnected.

Perhaps the question for hurricane season 2026 is not simply whether Cayman could survive another direct hit from a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane. We know buildings can be rebuilt. Roads can be cleared. Power lines can be raised again. But could we survive being disconnected from the world we have built around ourselves?

Ivan was traumatic, but somewhere amid the destruction something extraordinary happened. The island began healing from the inside out. Strangers became neighbours. Sharing became second nature. Someone with a generator suddenly had 10 extension cords running across a yard. Someone with a working stove fed people who did not. Someone with a chainsaw cleared a road. Someone with water shared it. And when the sun disappeared each evening, Caymankind shone as brightly as the flashlights scattered across a darkened island. That, too, is part of the story of Hurricane Ivan.

We should remember the destruction 22 years later. We should remember the fear. We should remember what complacency can cost us. But we should also remember who we became when everything else was stripped away.

Ivan will not remain Cayman's benchmark forever. Cayman Brac and Little Cayman already have a second one: on 8 November 2008, according to the US National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Paloma's eyewall crossed the eastern end of Cayman Brac as a Category 4 and damaged or destroyed nearly every building on the island. One day another storm will come for all three islands. Another generation will have its hurricane stories. Another name will become shorthand for "before" and "after", just as Ivan did for us.

When that day comes, the real test will not simply be whether our buildings are stronger or our emergency plans are better. It will be whether we still remember how to be neighbours when the lights go out. Because eventually another storm will give a new generation its own Ivan. They just might not be able to post about it.