Bermuda has been extremely lucky in dodging major hurricanes barreling up the Atlantic Ocean but is not likely to dodge Hurricane Igor, which is on course to make a direct hit on the tiny island sometime Sunday night into early Monday.

Forecasters are predicting Igor will be a Category 2 when it makes landfall, with sustained winds near 110 miles per hour, gusting to 130.  The Public Safety Minister told residents to prepare for “probably the worst storm we’ve seen.”

Igor is considered a serious threat and a “long duration event” with tropical storm force winds beginning late Saturday and lasting 40 hours or more, bringing heavy rain, possible tornadoes and waves of up to 30-40 feet.

Igor is being compared to Fabian, the last major storm to hit Bermuda back in 2003.  Fabian was a Cat 3 with 120 mile per hour winds and 30 foot waves.  It did $300 million in damages, knocking out the causeway between the mainland and the airport, killing 4 people including police officers trying to rescue a man who drove off the bridge.  Officials say that causeway will be closed Sunday when winds top 50 knots, but the airport is shutting down Saturday afternoon and won’t reopen until Monday at the earliest.  In other words, anyone still here is stuck here until Igor is gone.

Bermuda is just 21 miles long and a mile wide but with more than 64,000 residents it’s one of the most densely populated places on earth.  It’s also a very expensive place to live, in part because very little is produced or grown here.  Almost all goods must be shipped or flown in and nothing is being delivered for at least the next couple of days.

Residents have been picking shelves clean in the hardware and grocery stores.  The most popular items include candles, flashlights, torches, batteries, rope, sheets of plywood, tarps and bottled water.  Generators are sold out and so are large fuel cans.

Power company workers have been put on standby, ready to respond to outages after the storm.  The hospital is staffed with extra doctors and nurses but residents have been warned ambulances will not respond to calls during the worst weather.  Extra police are on duty and soldiers have been massed at their base and a shelter has been opened too, just in case.

Hotels report bookings are down 50%.  Some visitors canceled trips because of the forecast and others left early on some of the extra flights brought in to handle the exodus.  The guests who are still here are being moved to more secure rooms and nervously watching forecasts and the pounding waves outside, where the surf has been too rough for swimming since mid-week.

The local newspaper published a warning from the mother of one of the officers killed by Fabian in 2003: “Bermuda, please be safe.”