There’s been this running joke over the years. Every time Zac left Cayman on vacation, something bad would happen. Hurricanes, major hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, you name it. If there was a plague or pestilence he could have had a biblical full house.

In 2004, Zac went on vacation. While he was gone, Grand Cayman was hit by Hurricane Ivan on September 11, 2004. That storm messed things up so bad that it became the new benchmark. People didn’t talk about “the great storm of ‘32” anymore, everything was related to and compared to Ivan.

A few months later, just as things were starting to get back to normal Zac left for a Christmas holiday.  On Dec 14th Grand Cayman was struck by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. No damage, a couple sinkholes opened up and no tsunami.

So began the joking around about The Curse of Zachary. There have been a couple more incidents since then but this one takes the cake.

Hurricane Paloma is about to rock Grand Cayman with a direct hit. The weather is deteriorating already and the eye is supposed to pass very close by or directly over Grand Cayman tonight at about midnight. What’s the rub? ZAC WAS JUST THERE ON VACATION AND LEFT A DAY OR TWO AGO.

I’m writing this post as I sit warm and dry in my office in Vancouver now, so rather than looking outside and wondering how long the power is going to stay on, I’m keeping an eye on the weather sites.

In 2004 I was offline for days before getting online via dial-up satellite phone networking. On the grounds of “testing” the system, I borrowed a laptop and fired it up on a folding table on the apron at the airport and posted a quick “hello world” post here via Internet Explorer.

The major difference in this emergency situation is that this time there are hundreds, if not thousands of people on the island who are on Facebook and can post updates from their cellphones, Blackberries and unlocked iPhones. In the past I’ve received emails from Fox News and CNN before during and after hurricanes asking for photos and for permission to use existing photos and videos I had posted to Flickr or Youtube. Now they don’t even need to work that hard. Just by scanning through Facebook (or MySpace I suppose) they can farm a LOT of user-generated on-the-spot, eyewitness content.