Wow, that was incredible. The biggest typhoon I’ve ever experienced.
We went to bed last night knowing there’d be high winds and rain, so had battened down the hatches and let the cats inside for the night. They were nervous. First asleep in a pile near the door, as the wind picked up they began pacing and meowing. Around 2:30 am, none of us were sleeping. Right after the power went out and the house was shaking with wind and rain, Futatsuyama leapt through the shoji right onto the bed and Tod’s head. I spent a few hours after that sitting in the hall with them trying to keep them calm. Nobody slept, but the shoji antics stopped.
We spent the height of the storm texting with our neighbors, comparing situations. Everyone was safe, though we all had lost power and heard ominous bumps and cracks.
A citywide announcement at about 2:45 ordered everyone to stay indoors. At that point, Tod remembered he’d left a plant on the balcony. He wanted to go out to get it. No way did I let him do that. That’s how people get hit with debris. The plant was still there in the morning.
Winds died down around 4 am and I caught a few hours of sleep, then took a 6:30 am walk around the house. A big branch had fallen in the driveway but missed hitting Tilly. A bunch of bamboo in the back was broken or leaning into the house. Things outside that I thought I’d secured were blown around. But we had no damage to the roof or any of the windows.
Not so lucky in the crossroad. A tree fell into the road, but had already been chainsawed out of the way. The bridge construction scaffolding was a tangle. There were sheets of totan blown off walls and lying all over. I could see fallen bamboo and debris all along the road.
Back on the neighborhood chat channel, I offered to go over to SDF to see how it fared. On the way, I found Mika dragging huge limbs of a tree off her garage and roof. Down the road a bit, Takanashi’s old shed had finally fallen over – not onto his car, miraculously.
And when I turned the corner towards SDF, I saw Uchida-san’s woodworking shop flattened to smithereens in the rice paddy. His stock of wood was scattered like toothpicks. The heavy table saws and lathes had stayed in place. I helped him unfold a tarp to cover them from any more rain.
SDF took a hit, too. Our picnic table and benches flew across the field. The columns by the front door fell over (they were mostly decorative, not load bearing) and the roof flashing tore off in several places. Windows were fine, there were some leaks inside. A half a day of group work will fix it up, I think.
But while I was mopping up some leaks, I got a call from Zan. “I need your help. The police are here. They are making me evacuate.” She sounded confused and upset. Trees had fallen on her house; the mountain behind was gone in a landslide.
I hopped in the kei-truck while texting our neighbors and within a few minutes we had approached her house. The road was blocked by a fallen tree. There were electric wires all over the road. Her house was invisible – obscured by massive fallen cedars.
Literally threading our way through the trees, we reached a miraculous clearing in front of her house. She was attempting to pack to leave. Got the cats in their carriers. Grabbed essentials and some personal mementos and after navigating her panic and shock, drove her, the cats and her stuff to our place for refuge.
I don’t think any of us were prepared for this.
