The News Of Tomorrow, Today

Subscribe

Richard Branson Is Having A Weird Sleepover With ‘Young People’ During Hurricane Irma

Gizmodo International Avatar
Gizmodo International
Richard Branson Is Having A Weird Sleepover With ‘Young People’ During Hurricane Irma

Let’s talk about a few facts. Billionaire party enthusiast Richard Branson owns a private isle in the Virgin Islands. Branson’s island sits squarely in the path of Hurricane Irma, one the strongest storms the Atlantic has ever seen. Rather than retreat to a safer location, Branson has collected a mysterious group of “young people” for a “sleepover” in the wine cellar on his private island. They’re gonna ride it out.

Image: Wikicommons / giggel / Getty

This is all true information. The hurricane should be pummelling Necker Island, the aforementioned private isle owned by Branson, at the time this post was published. On the eve of the storm, Branson detailed his plan for a wine-soaked, game-filled slumber party for Hurricane Irma on Virgin’s blog. “The atmosphere is eerie but beautiful,” he wrote.

The eerie part makes perfect sense. With a hurricane of historic proportions bearing down on Branson and his young friends, it only takes a glance at the photos of the scene on Neckar Island to realise that this plan is weird as hell. It also seems idiotic and, to a degree, mysteriously sinister. Look:

Now is a good time to point out that meteorologists spotted Irma forming in the east Atlantic nearly a week ago. They mapped out the probable path of what they expected to become a major storm, and it seemed almost certain that Irma would plow right into the Virgin Islands. Hundreds of kilometres northwest of Neckar Island, all Florida counties declared a state of emergency nearly a day and a half ago, long after hurricane warnings had been issued in Puerto Rico. So this storm was hardly a surprise to the folks in the Virgin Islands, including ultra-rich adventure-seeker Branson.

I’m not an expert on disaster preparedness. However, I do have some doubts that retreating to an underground wine cellar as storm surges threaten to cause widespread flooding is a good idea. Hanging out next to unobstructed windows that appear to be reinforced with masking tape also seems unwise. Here’s another image from Branson’s Hurricane Irma bunker:

Then again, maybe this room isn’t where the storm-time slumber party is happening. Branson’s last tweet before the storm:

And here’s a video taken in the British Virgin Islands during the storm:

We’ll see what happens to Branson and his young friends. It remains unclear why all of these people were on the island when the hurricane hit. Maybe Branson wanted to stay and some of his staffers had to stay, too. Perhaps they weren’t able to evacuate in time and figured the wine cellar would be safe enough. It’s possible that this is something stranger, like a game that rich people play during natural disasters.

We can’t know the truth until Branson emerges from his boozy bunker — hopefully safe and sound — and explains. With any luck, he’ll write another blog post about his brush with Hurricane Irma. As for anyone else in the path of the storm, get out of the way if you can.

The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.