Hurricanes and Typhoons

Watching the television reports of hurricane Irene brought back memories, especially after I communicated with friend of mine who took his daughter back to New York for the start of the fall semester. We start classes on Monday and yesterday I asked him what his status was (text message) and he responded he was trapped until Tuesday afternoon. I've been through two typhoons (that's the Pacific Ocean version of a hurricane and I like the name better) in my life.

Note that there were no
windows, just louvers.

I'll start with the second, since it was less dramatic. I was teaching strategic planning to members of the Hong Kong Olympic Committee when my host told me that class would be over in 30 minutes. My response was, "We still have 2 hours." And he said, "Not now, we have a stage 4 hurricane coming and all public transportation stops in 2 hours." Needless to say, I got done in my allotted 30 minutes and let everyone go. That evening all of the big stores were closed and all of the mom and pop stores were open, including the restaurants. The storm missed us and hit Macau, so the next morning we were back in class.

Some 40 years prior to that I experienced my first typhoon as a youngster living on Guam, in the Marianas archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It was in 1956 or 1957 - I really don't remember. We lived on Anderson Air Force Base and had a couple stay with us during the storm. They lived in quarters that weren't deemed safe. Our housing was on high ground at the north end of the island and we had no windows - just louvers and screens. Hence, you can imagine that keeping water out was a challenge. Fortunately we had all rattan furniture and carpets - long before it was fashionable.

Guam is a beautiful island in the Pacific. It recovers
quickly from disasters. This is what I remember most -
the beauty of the island.

We filled up the bathtub with water, for drinking purposes and then mopped the floors all night. Finally about 2 am everyone went to bed and got up in the morning and mopped all the water out of the house. There was a couple of inches of water in places, but the storm had passed. Not far from our home was a great outdoor theater that we often went to. It had completely collapsed. I don't have a photo of that, but the photo below is of the gymnasium, or what was left of it.

The gym was really a big quonset hut that couldn't survive
the heavy winds. It gives an idea of the force of the winds.

For us kids it was a real adventure. We had know idea how ferocious a typhoon could be and what damage could be caused. I think of Dennis and Juanita and their family as they ride out hurricane Irene and know they will be okay.