Living in Hawaii is paradise most of the time for Helen Raine and her family – except for last week, when two hurricanes headed for the islands.

The quiet before the storm is broken by the ominous sound of the neighbours’ drill.

They are putting plywood boards over their windows, slowly barricading themselves in.

Over the waters of the Pacific, not one but two huge hurricanes are rushing straight for Hawaii, their perfectly formed eyes glaring at the satellites that photograph them.

As soon as news of Hurricane Iselle and Hurricane Julio breaks, panic buying starts on the island of Kauai, where I live.

Twenty years ago, Kauai was hit hard by Iniki, which caused almost $2 billion in damages across the islands, killing six people and knocking out the power for months in some places.

It left 6,500 houses destroyed or severely damaged. Petrol stations took two months to reopen and some people were left without water for weeks.

The veterans of that monster storm are taking no chances this time.

Within a couple of days, water shelves are empty in the major supermarkets.

Costco, a hypermarket that sells in bulk, has queues all the way down the aisle to the very back of its gargantuan warehouse.

Cans of Spam sell out too; it’s a local staple, served on an oblong of rice wrapped in seaweed.

And meanwhile, everyone is glued to the internet, watching the strangely beautiful shapes of Iselle and Julio pirouette wildly across the ocean on a collision course with the most southerly island in the chain, Big Island.

After that, the predicted route takes Iselle neatly over every island, including Kauai.

The thing about hurricanes is that you know about them days in advance.

It’s like a surcharge that we have to pay for living on such a beautiful island

We’ve got plenty of time to prepare but it’s surprisingly difficult to think about a natural disaster when the sun is shining brightly and the water couldn’t be better for swimming.

As the radio warnings become too dense to ignore, I finally Google the Red Cross emergency list. Batteries for a radio, torches, camping gas, tinned goods and a first aid kit get stacked in our walk-in wardrobe, the only place in the house with no windows.

I survey the little space; it’s going to be cosy for a family of four.

We fill the bath with water, which promptly drains out again. Time for a new plug.

I collect every bottle we have and fill our two camping containers, the cool box and a few Tupperware containers. Lack of clean water is always the biggest post-disaster challenge.

Almost all the houses here are made of wood. During Iniki, the unbolted roofs blew straight off, the windows broke and homes were lashed to ruins by wind and rain.

Our roof is a new, supposedly hurricane-proof design, although we’re losing shingles already.

Worse, we have huge picture windows at the back of the house with a sea view that suddenly feels very exposed.

There’s so much window to cover that we’re overwhelmed at the very idea; and besides, the plywood section of the hardware store is completely sold out of larger boards.

Instead, I buy seven rolls of duct tape, only to discover that they no longer recommend taping your windows; it just doesn’t work.

One day into the new kindergarten term, schools and offices close the day before the storm is expected to make landfall. Then the waiting begins.

We clean out drawers, trim the trees in the garden, wash and clean before we lose power and water.

It’s still sunny in Kauai (although the wind is picking up) when we get the first reports about the storm hitting Big Island, 500 kilometres away.

There’s a huge tidal surge, which sends water flooding onto coastal roads and properties, but the houses are on stilts and they survive.

There’s so much water washing down from the mountains that minor waterfalls are turning into Niagara, throwing great plumes of spray into the air.

But Big Island has a natural defender – Pele. She’s the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes.

Over centuries of spewing lava, she’s created the world’s tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, as well as several other huge shield volcanoes.

As Iselle approaches Big Island, she’s still a densely packed vortex of furious wind, cloud and rain.

Trees come down, houses are crushed and telegraph poles splinter. The power is knocked out and even fails in some of the shelters.

But a few hours later, the storm has beaten itself into a chaotic pulp against the vast skirts of Pele.

Satellite pictures show the failed hurricane starting to fall apart.

By the time she reaches Honolulu, she’s almost defused, still blowing hard and flinging out rain but already downgraded to a tropical storm.

And as she makes landfall over Kauai, she’s little more than an unseasonably gusty storm.

We’ve got plenty of time to prepare but it’s surprisingly difficult to think about a natural disaster when the sun is shining brightly

Even so, a couple of violent squalls shake the house. Overnight, there’s a spectacular thunderstorm. Sharp, blue lightning flashes before the air is sucked out of our bedroom.

There’s a pause and then the darkness explodes in a fit of fist-shaking thunder.

In the morning, Iselle is all but dead, but behind her, Julio is still churning towards us as a category three hurricane: violent, potentially deadly but now on course to miss the islands… unless it changes direction.

As the next sweltering day dawns, heavy with humidity in the wake of Iselle, Julio does turn.

It arcs to the north, away from the islands, leaving only an unsettling feeling of our vulnerability to whims of nature behind it.

It’s like a surcharge that we have to pay for living on such as beautiful island, a reminder that next time we might not be so lucky.