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Hurricane Ana is creeping up on Hawaii, just as Gonzalo is leaving Bermuda behind thousands of miles away in the Atlantic.

Gonzalo, a Category 3 storm when it smashed into the British island territory with winds of 110mph, knocked out power to half of the island's 70,000 residents. The storm has now been downgraded to Category 2 as it continues a northeasterly track through the Atlantic Ocean.

The BBC reported just a short time ago:

"Emergency services are waiting for daybreak to assess the full damage wreaked by the second powerful storm to strike the island in less than a week.

"Strong winds and heavy surf continued after the eye of the hurricane moved north into the Atlantic, and tidal surges are still possible."

Bermuda's The Royal Gazette says: "After a lull during the eye between about 9.30-10.30pm last night, strong winds again battered Bermuda as the Island faced the second half of Hurricane Gonzalo."

Meanwhile, in the Western Pacific, Hurricane Ana "was carving a path south of Hawaii early Saturday, producing high waves, strong winds and heavy rains that prompted a flood advisory," The Associated Press says.

The National Weather Service says that the center of Ana is about 170 miles southwest of the Big Island and about 225 miles from Honolulu.

It says there's little chance of hurricane conditions on the islands.

A third system, Tropical Storm Trudy, is making landfall on Mexico's southern Pacific coast, about 75 miles southeast of Acapulco.

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StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative records stories from members of the U.S. military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paul Braun is a sergeant with the 34th Military Police Company in the Minnesota Army National Guard. In 2009, when he was serving near Basra, his company was assigned an Iraqi interpreter they called Philip.

Philip came to the U.S. in late 2013, with Sergeant Braun's help, and now they live together in Minnesota. But Philip's wife and children are still in Iraq. Earlier this week, he returned home, hoping to reach his family and bring them back to the U.S.

Shortly before leaving, Philip sat down with Sgt. Braun for a StoryCorps interview in Blaine, Minn. He recalled the first day they met.

"You scared me, dude," Philip says. "Your attitude in the beginning and with your Mohawk — "

"I scared everybody with that Mohawk," Braun says.

"You told me, 'If you try to mess with my soldiers, I will shoot you,' " Philip remembers.

"You smiled at me and said, 'Someday, we will be able to laugh about this conversation while we're drinking tea,' " Braun replies. "And that's when I knew, 'I think this guy will be OK.' We started to trust you, and since you fought with us and you bled with us and you lived with us, you became us. And my Iraqi interpreter became my American brother."

"And my American soldier became my Iraqi brother," Philip says. "I used to hate Americans. You are our enemy, and that's it. And you're the only one who changed my mind. With you, I was talking about the similarity between us as people. It's just about being human there or here."

"I remember sitting down one day thinking, I didn't want to leave you alone," Braun says. "I knew how dangerous it was for you because we saw all those people that were murdered for being interpreters, and I was so afraid that that was going to happen to you. And it took years to get the proper documents to get you over here."

Braun became Philip's sponsor, filing an application with the State Department for a translator's visa. Philip came to America, but left three daughters, a son and a wife back in Iraq.

He says he's scared about going back to his home country to get them, because the so-called Islamic State controls the roads. It will be a dangerous trip.

"I hate to ask you," Braun says: "What do you think your odds of being able to make it back alive are?"

"Let's make it 50-50, man," Philip says. "Like, really, 50-50."

"It's frustrating hearing you talk about the dangers that you're going to go through over there and not being able to go with you to help you," Braun says. "As you helped me, I wanted to be able to help you back."

"I appreciate you saying that, but really, you can't," Philip says. "Just pray for me, that's it."

Philip left for Iraq on Wednesday. If all goes well, he and his family will return to the U.S. in February 2015, and move in with Sgt. Braun.

Audio produced for Weekend Edition by Andres Caballero.

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.

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The dustiest portion of my home library includes the 1980s books — about how Japan's economy would dominate the world.

And then there are the 1990s books — about how the Y2K computer glitch would end the modern era.

Go up one more shelf for the late 2000s books — about oil "peaking." The authors claimed global oil production was reaching a peak and would soon decline, causing economic chaos.

The titles include Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, Peak Oil Survival and When Oil Peaked.

When those books were written, worldwide oil drillers were producing about 85 million barrels a day. Now they are pumping about 93 million barrels.

NPR/U.S. Energy Information Adminstration

Despite growing violence in the Middle East, oil supplies just keep rising.

At the same time, demand has been shrinking. This week, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for oil-demand growth for this year and next.

Turns out, oil demand — not production — is what peaked.

Now prices are plunging, down around 25 percent since June.

What did the forecasters get so wrong? In large measure, their mistake was in failing to appreciate the impact of a relatively new technology, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Because of fracking, oil is being extracted from shale formations in Texas and North Dakota. Production has shot up so quickly in those areas that the United States is now the world's largest source of oil and natural gas liquids, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This new competition has shocked OPEC. Members say they want to maintain their current market share, so they are keeping up production and even boosting it.

Bottom line: The peak of production is nowhere on the horizon.

So are the authors of "peaking" books now slapping themselves in the head and admitting they had it all wrong?

Some are, at least a bit.

Energy analyst Chris Nelder wrote a book in 2008 titled Profit from the Peak. The cover's inside flap said: "There is no doubt that oil production will peak, if it hasn't already, and that all other fossil fuels will peak soon after."

In a phone discussion about his prediction, Nelder said "my expectation has not materialized."

The surge in oil production in Texas and North Dakota "has really surprised everyone," he said. "If you had told me five years ago we'd be producing more oil today, I would have said, 'No way.' I did not believe at all that this would happen."

But while he acknowledges that oil has not peaked yet, he says it might soon because "oil is trapped on a narrow ledge" where it must stand on stable prices. Holding the price of a barrel steady around $110 for years allows energy companies to invest in fracking operations.

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Over the past three years, those are exactly the conditions drillers have enjoyed. Oil was sitting pretty on a stable plateau of roughly $110 a barrel. But now, as global growth slows, the price is plunging, down to around $83 per barrel.

"China is cooling off quite a bit. Much of Europe is slipping back towards recession," Nelder said. If oil prices stay low for long, frackers may need to stand down. "There is a lower level [in price] where they just can't make money," he said.

And with OPEC pumping so much oil now to hold down prices, maybe they are using up their supplies more quickly. "Depletion never sleeps," he said.

So perhaps Nelder has been wrong so far, but could be right before too long.

That's what Kenneth Worth thinks. He's the author of Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, a 2010 book. He says the fracking boom has been so frenzied in this decade that drillers may have extracted the cheapest oil already. With fracking, oil supplies "deplete very rapidly. You have to keep drilling really fast," he said.

With prices now so low, the money to keep up the frenzy may not be there.

So maybe the "peaking" predictions weren't wrong, just premature. Then again, at some point, any forecast can turn out to be right, he says. "If you take enough of a timeline, eventually we're all dead," Worth noted.

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Meriatu Kamara, 35, lost her husband and two children to Ebola. But she and three of her children survived: (from left) Sallaymatu, Abubakar, Aminatu. They've lived in the survivors' ward for two months. They're from Makeni, a city 130 miles away and haven't yet been able to make their way home. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Meriatu Kamara, 35, lost her husband and two children to Ebola. But she and three of her children survived: (from left) Sallaymatu, Abubakar, Aminatu. They've lived in the survivors' ward for two months. They're from Makeni, a city 130 miles away and haven't yet been able to make their way home.

Anders Kelto/NPR

Jusoisatu Jusu, 24, lives in a room in an abandoned hospital ward with her six-year-old son. They've survived Ebola. And now they're stuck.

"It's terrible," she says. "We have a lot of things to do, so we want to get back."

But they can't. They live in a town called Makeni, about 130 miles away. Public transportation around the country is limited or canceled because of the outbreak. And Jusu doesn't have the money to pay for a private ride.

About 30 Ebola survivors live in this hospital ward in Kenema, a city in Sierra Leone. It was once a center for doctors who did research on Lassa fever, caused by a virus that was in Sierra Leone long before Ebola arrived. When Ebola hit, many staff members in the ward died, and the building was abandoned. Now, it's essentially a squatter camp.

Like other survivors, Jusu had to hand over her clothes to be destroyed when she arrived. She's been given one new outfit — a long, green skirt and pink tank top.

"I wash and I wear it the same thing, every day," she says.

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Kitibe, 26, has recovered from Ebola and was ready to go home. Then the hospital told him he might have TB. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Kitibe, 26, has recovered from Ebola and was ready to go home. Then the hospital told him he might have TB.

Anders Kelto/NPR

Some survivors are able to go home, but they're not always welcome. Many are told they can't get water from a shared tap or sell food at community markets, says Elizabeth Boakarie, a counselor at the hospital. Every night, she and her colleague, social worker Gladys Gassama, speak on radio shows, telling listeners to stop shunning survivors.

Another survivor at the hospital is a 26-year-old man named Kitibe. "I was tormented when I was in the Ebola ward," he says. "There was [so much] pain within my body."

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Kitibe has recovered and is ready to be discharged. Social worker Gladys Gassama takes a seat next to him for a counseling session about life after Ebola. She tells him that people in his community probably know that he had Ebola. She says when he goes home, he should try to educate people about the disease and should not act as if he's contagious because people might think he is.

Then Kitibe gets some bad news. A nurse named Donnell Tholley tells him he will not be able to leave the hospital today because he is suspected to have tuberculosis. If his test comes back positive, he'll have to spend a few weeks, possibly up to six months, in a tuberculosis unit at the hospital.

Only the TB ward is not able to accept him at the moment. So he wanders into the building where other Ebola survivors are hanging out. The room feels like a jail cell — brick walls, metal bars over the windows, a filthy bathroom off to one side. He sits on a wooden bench, next to a teenage boy, and watches the children play with a toy car.

And no one in the crowded room seems to know he likely has a contagious lung disease.

Ebola survivors

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