Twelve Years Ago When We Experienced the Strong Typhoon
As the monsoon and typhoon season is coming I can't help but was afraid of the possibilities of another strong typhoon that might hit our place. I witnessed the first devastating typhoon back in 1998. Since that, I had trauma with regards to strong winds brought by the typhoon.
Twelve years ago, that was the second time. It even happened this same day, May 17. I woke up in the morning, and it's a bit windy. Not expecting the strong winds since it's just like a normal rainy day with mild winds. There is also a big event that is supposed to be held in our town. The popular TV program, the now-defunct Wowowee, will have a big show close to the beach, but was canceled due to the rains.
That day, the strong typhoon is not expected because there hasn't been a forecast that the typhoon would be strong. Everything are good, but in the afternoon, the wind begins to intensify. Thinking that it would be its peak strength, we just shrugged it off. Besides, there is no such strong warning from the weather forecasters in the country. However, having witnessed the 1998 strong typhoon, there's a feeling of nervousness in me.
As darkness came, it even intensified more. I was afraid. I can hear the loud strong winds, as well as some roof from the neighborhood about to be removed. I am actually expecting that there will be a severe damage in our house. There's a certain time that the wind stopped. However, I cna hear something like whistling. I was thinking that the strong winds might be over though.
After several minutes, the wind has intensified again, even stronger. I didn't realize until some years later, we are at the eye of the typhoon the time it went calm. I can hear smashing things outside, even hitting our house. It took about an hour of strong winds, before it became calm. Since it's very dark, we don't get to check what happened to the second storey of the house. Just slept until early morning.
I was expecting that the second storey would be greatly damaged, I went upstairs to find out it wasn't severly damaged. Our neighbors' houses got a lot of damaged, and the one closes to us, got the second storey the house damaged 80%. Some of its woods hit our roofs, which is the only damage the house had.
I was saddened to see houses outside. Some has their roofs completely removed. Uprooted trees around. It's really a mess with a lot of debris littered around the streets. In the park close to our house, many trees are uprooted. Electrical posts has bowed down, with some wires plucked.
We haven't had electricity for more than two weeks. That's shorter though compared to the one in 1998, which it took about a month. After the typhoon, our resilience has proven that we are ready to move on and recover. We've had strong typhoons after that, but not in the same level a sit did in 2008.
It is good to be prepared, but we are hoping and praying that such devastation won't occur again. However, our planet is just too damaged, that there are forces of nature happening that we can never control.
This was also posted on Peakd.