There are stories of residents helping each other after Hurricane Irma barrelled through the Caribbean.
And then, there are reports of people planning to blow their fans towards the hurricane to prevent it from making landfall.
About 60,000 people are attending a public event created on Facebook, called ‘Everybody Points Their Fans At The Hurricane To Blow It Away’.
Another 45,000 are ‘interested’, expressing their desire to participate in the event that lasts till September 13.
The description of event, posted by Joshua Stanaland, reads:
Everyone takes their fans outside and points them at Hurricane Irma to blow it away from us. Air compressors with a blow gun attachment also a plus, or anything else. Get creative. Date/time subject to change due to the unpredictable path it may take.
{{/usCountry}}Everyone takes their fans outside and points them at Hurricane Irma to blow it away from us. Air compressors with a blow gun attachment also a plus, or anything else. Get creative. Date/time subject to change due to the unpredictable path it may take.
{{/usCountry}}*Not responsible for any collapsed lungs should you choose to blow manually.
It is unclear whether Stanaland’s fanning event was purely tongue-in-cheek, or if he had meant it in earnest. But social media users have stepped up to the call. There were images and videos of people pointing industrial fans, home fans, even hairdryers out of their windows to ‘blow’ the storm away.
Silly as it may sound, the event was a harmless exercise to unite the state in times of devastation. The hashtag #unitedwefan might have helped too.
Irma walloped Cuba’s northern coast on Saturday and was expected to hit Florida on Sunday morning, threatening massive damage from wind and flooding to the fourth-largest US state by population.
The International Red Cross says 1.2 million people have already been affected by Irma -- a number that could rise to 26 million.