Friday 11th October
You know it’s coming, and you know there is nothing you can do to get out of its path, so all you can do is take the necessary precautions and then sit tight and wait and hope that it passes by with no more than a rattle and a roar and leaves everything mostly intact. No, I am not talking about England winning the rugby world cup, I am talking about Typhoon Hagibis, the supertyphoon that is on its way. So, there’s three things to prepare, food, water, and electricity.
Food
I’ve discovered I am hopeless at emergency shopping but if there were ever an Olympics the Japanese would give the Brits a run for their money. It’s a wel-known trope that if there is any kind of snow in the offing in the UK, the Brits go running for the supermarkets stocking up food to last a fornight just in case they are snowed in. News bulletins show rows of empty shelves as punters panic buy for artic blast. Well, it turns out, the Japanese are just as adept at the panic buy. Bread was sold out by Thursday, soon everything else followed. Check-out queues snaked around the store. But it seems, I haven’t inherited the panic shopping gene. The trick is to buy non-perishables that don’t need cooking. A power cut will leave all your fresh food rotting in the fridge while you try to eat raw eggs and uncooked pasta. So, after buying chicken and pasta and stuff on Thursday, I returned to stock up on nuts, and ham and rice crackers on Friday.
Water
In the event of water supply being cut off, one needs water to live. So, you are advised to fill bottles for drinking water and place them around the house and also to fill the bath with water to wash dishes or flush the loo with. Also, we were told to fill bags with water to put them over drains to stop sewage coming up. I didn’t do that. I thought. I’d take the risk.
Charge.
Charge everything you have and keep it topped up in case of a power cut. Three phones, iPad, computer, hair clippers, (you never know when you need an emergency haircut.) The Japanese electricity company must have been making a fortune tonight.
So, I am ready, now all I can do is wait.
Saturday 12th October
This will be my third typhoon and if there is one thing I’ve learnt from the others is that Typhoons are like the Portuguese, they are never on time. 4pm was predicted landfall, but 4pm has come and gone and there is no sign of the impending storm. Okay, the wind is a little strong and the rain slightly heavier but at the moment there’s no sign of the eye. The big worry with this storm is not so much its strength, although it is the most powerful storm for a generation, but the timing. Coming during autumn and close to full moon and at high tide the storm has the main ingredients for a storm surge, a massive tidal wave that rushes up the rivers and across coastal regions. The flooding in New Orleans for example was not caused by rain but by the storm surge. Coupled with that there is a huge band of rain preceding the eye of the storm and the authorities are worried about the dams bursting so might need to release some water. The floods in Prague in 2002 were caused by having to release water from a dam. Now, I live in a low-lying area less than a kilometre from a river. I know there are flood plains by the river and hefty walls as flood defences, but nonetheless, there is the threat. I wish this storm would hurry up and pass. 
Sunday 13th October
It’s now 2.30am and I have just been woken up by yet another emergency alert. It is the 8th one I have had and when they come, they come to all of my three fully charged phones.They don’t scream as loudly as the earthquake alarm, but when the fanfare rings you know about it. Once they’ve come, you need to screenshot them and send them to a Japanese speaker or use the camera function on Google translate to do the best job you can. Out of the 8 so far only 2 have been directly for my area, the rest were for surrounding areas. But that doesn’t lessen the sense of foreboding that accompanies each doo doo bee toot tee too. The two for my region told the elderly to go to shelters and told the rest of us to be on high alert or go to shelters. The problem, flooding. Now, I live on the ground floor, I sleep on a futon which is on the floor, if there’s a flood, I am in trouble, In really should go to a shelter. How often have I called people idiots for not leaving their properties when a disaster is looming? Yet, in conversation with the other teachers who live in my block, we decided we’d prefer to be in our own places than sitting in a school with a load of geriatrics. So, with my futons stuffed in my loft, I spent the evening sitting on a blanket on the floor, glued to a live webcam stream of the river, relieved that it is not seemingly over-flowing into the flood plains, yet and thinking that maybe, I should have gone to the shelter. |
| Webcam view of river, 2.56 Saturday night. Four people appear from nowhere. |
As for the storm itself, well the rain rattled my windows and the wind roared like a melancholy sea-lion, and then, after no more than 20-25 minutes, silence, was this the calm at the eye of the storm? Would the winds rage and the rain lash again? No. I waited and waited but the storm never returned. I slide open the door and peeked outside. It was calm, peaceful even; the streets deserted but no debris, no telegraph poles prone in the street, no windows smashed. The storm had been gentle to the good folk of Horikiri. But what about the flooding? How was the river? The webcam showed it was beginning to lap the banks; was the water on the baseball fields puddles or floods? More worryingly four people appeared in the image. What were they doing there? Were they authorities assessing the situation or idiots looking for adventure? I watched on the webcam as they moved to safety and decided the risk was now minimal. I got my futons down from the loft and tried to get to sleep. Which was a success until the emergency alert that just woke me up. Luckily, for me, it’s not for me. I can go back to sleep.
 |
| Where the four were standing. What were they thinking? |
The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to check the webcam of the river. What I saw shocked me. All of the baseball fields were now underwater. The only way to reach where the four people had stood last night was by boat. The river had well and truly burst its banks. It was time to go to look what was going on.
The second shock was the weather. At the eye of the storm it is hard to imagine the next day could be so beautiful. The sky was a crystal-liquid blue, the wind blew in warm, reassuring gusts, the clouds fluffy on the horizon. As I walked towards the river, it soon became clear that we had escaped relatively unscathed; a few bikes lay forlorn on the street, a potted plant or two had been knocked over, but mostly things looked as they were.
At the river it was clear there would be no baseball today, as all the diamonds that are dotted along the banks were submerged. The river rushed and gushed, gurgled and gargled, moving with raw power. People milled around taking photos and watching the birds float along on the current. I guess most people felt relieved that the flood plains and levees had done their job.
So, now it’s Monday. Japan gets back to normal very quickly after these things. Today was like any other day, supermarket shelves replenished, trains running on time, queues for Hamazushi, even the river level is getting back to normal. I know other areas got it much worse and I thank my lucky stars that I just had a day of stress and emergency alerts. There’s things I haven’t mentioned, the earthquake that came mid-storm, the conversations I had with friends and colleagues; a good example of the build leading the blind, and of course, the sadness at the 53 deaths caused by the storm.
 |
| Not the roadsign |
No comments:
Post a Comment