Hurricane Gonzalo tore up Bermuda, but it may have also blown Mica Murray a little closer to realising a dream.

As the storm raged outside, the 23-year-old earned her stripes, helping air the EMO broadcast from an underground bunker in Prospect.

She and her Police Public and Media Relations colleagues Dwayne Caines and Robin Simmons sat there for 72 hours. Calls and e-mails kept them abreast of what was happening with the storm, but it wasn’t the same as experiencing it themselves.

A piece of the roof of the building came off, but deep in the basement, they didn’t hear a thing.

“We were really shocked when we came out and saw all the damage,” she said. “We were just glad that no one was killed in the storm.”

Miss Murray only started full-time with the Bermuda Police six months ago. She was easily the youngest person in the Police Command and Operations Centre during the storm. She waded right in, playing music, chatting on the air, answering questions from listeners and giving out important information about the Category 3 storm.

“I definitely don’t think I missed my calling as a radio DJ,” she said with a laugh. “That is a special skill set that I don’t have. But it definitely helped my dream of specialising in crisis communication. “It helped because during the day of the storm I was meeting people like the Premier [Michael Dunkley] and people from the Regiment and the Commissioner of Police [Michael DeSilva]. We interviewed them as part of the broadcast.”

She continued: “The hardest thing about it was probably just staying awake. During the whole thing we each had about two hours of sleep.”

Hurricane Gonzalo was actually the second time Miss Murray took to the airways in the span of a week.

“After Tropical Storm Fay, Dwayne Caines called at 9am and said the [Emergency Measures Organisation] was going to start broadcasting at 9.30am. I had to go in and start up the station. Luckily, I live very close by.”

She admitted her broadcast experience was exactly zero at that point, but she’d had some preparation for using the equipment.

“Being in police media relations causes you to be quick on your feet and there are never two days alike,” she said. “You have to have a sense of being prepared for anything.”

As the day proceeded she said the music selection was challenging.

“We have a computer programme that we use to select music,” she said. “Some people think we have a collection of compact discs, but we don’t. But it was challenging finding the right music for the mood, and finding music to fit all tastes.”

Throughout Hurricane Gonzalo they fielded a number of questions from the general public.

“The most common one was ‘where do I get a tarpaulin?’” she said. “Almost as soon as the wind stopped people were calling to ask when Belco was going to fix their electricity.”

One might expect three people trapped in a basement together for three days to get on each other’s nerves a bit, but Miss Murray said they all got on fabulously.

“The team I work with, Dwayne and Robin, are the coolest people to work with ever,” she said. “We have a really good working relationship. There was a light and happy atmosphere.”

After the storm, she was amused to learn that some children credited her with cancelling school.

“A lot of people came up to me on the street and thanked me,” she said. “It brought me a real sense of pride to serve my Country and provide vital information in a time of crisis.”