Typhoon Man-Yi passes through Okinawa - it was a big one!
The hatches were well and truly battened down on Friday night, my shutters closed and food and water stocked up. Yep - I was ready for typhoon Man-Yi to hit Okinawa. Upgraded to a supertyphoon on Thursday night, we had winds of 130mph and gusts getting over 155mph on Friday morning. It was pretty crazy out here. While I was listening to the Wigan - Leeds rugby league game on online radio we had 2 small powercuts of about 5 minutes. Another occurred in the morning as the wind and horizontal rain took its toll. I woke up at 7am on Friday morning and instantly realised that there was no way school would be going ahead. And then at 8:30 the electricity went off again. So I waited… and waited… and waited. And it didn’t come back on. The storm raged outside and the apartment shook a couple of times under the rage of the typhoon.
I’ve been in a few typhoons here in Okinawa, and a couple of direct hits, but this was probably the strongest and had caused most damage of all the ones I’ve seen. But it was still hot and with no air conditioning or fans, my apartment hit about 30 degrees after an hour or 2. I couldn’t open any windows as if I did the place would just be covered with water. So I sat and cooked and slept for a couple of hours as the heat rose. By about 1pm the wind was still pretty strong but I was able to go outside to survey the damage. A quick look around the car revealed only a little superficial damage. The rainguards on both passenger windows had been ripped off and were nowhere to be found. Although they were Mitsubishi original ones, I’m hoping that they can be replaced relatively cheaply.
So I got in my car and drove around for a while and there was quite a bit of damage all around. Traffic lights had no power and some were blown around to face the opposite direction, trees & electricity pylons had fallen (a few trees were blocking the road) and there was plenty of other stuff scattered around the roads. Credit to the authorities though, as soon as the wind became bearable, they had trucks on the roads and people picking the trees up and clearing pathways. That didn’t do much to help my situation with the electricity but was pretty efficient nevertheless.
I met up with Brian for dinner as I couldn’t cook anything at my place. We drove around for a little while realising everything was closed (unsurprisingly, as half of the island was without electricity), but eventually we found Cocos curry restaurant was the only place open so we stopped in there. The food was pretty good and it was good to chat to someone and get out of the house and into somewhere air-conditioned! On returning home I was hopeful that electricity would be restored. But alas, my hope was in vain as I returned home to a dark apartment block. Annoyingly, the apartment blocks on both sides of me had electricity, but ours seemed to be suffering from some sort of blackout. So I lit a candle and cracked some diving chemical lights, and sat there a little frustrated with things, until I finally went to bed at a disturbingly early 8:30pm.
I woke up, depressingly, to no electricity. 24 hours had passed without power and I started to think about how much I, and we as westernised people, rely so much on electricity. I read a couple of days ago that now in Iraq, the average time per day that a household has electricity is 20 minutes. That is not a minimum, but on average. There is no way a westernised society could run without electricity 24 hours a day, 265 days a year. When the power goes down, everything comes to a standstill.
So the morning went on but at least I could open the windows as the typhoon had moved on. I am actually quite worried for the mainland, which it is due to hit in the next 12 hours. The houses in Okinawa are made from concrete so the typhoons and elements don’t affect them so much. On the mainland things are very different and I’m sure the news will be full of houses having their roofs ripped off. Looking at the news though, Okinawa was not let off so lightly: 34 people were injured, 10,000 were forced to evacuate their homes and 134,000 houses have experienced a powercut. As I said before, this is probably the worst typhoon to hit the Okinawan mainland in the past 3 years.
About 2 hours ago, the power came back on, but now it turns out that I have no water! It must have gone off during the typhoon, and since then we’ve been running the water tank on the apartment roof dry. Hopefully it will come on in the next couple of hours as a shower with hot water would be nice! Fingers are crossed for some calmer weather in the near future and hopefully I can get some diving in. Until next time, take care and beware of 150mph winds!
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Seems our side fared better than yours. Quite a few trees down and the like and some flooding in areas but all in all everyone did quite well. Its all only minor damage.
Our friend Justin who lives near us but closer to the water lost power Friday afternoon and just got it back today at about 3:00, but he was part of a small section of houses that lost power for more than an hour or so out here. Fortunately he lives close enough to hang out in our air conditioning when ever he wanted.
Hopefully your water is restored soon, and we are all hoping for the water to clear up as past as possible!
Well I’m glad you made it through unscathed. I’ve got water on now so all is pretty much back to normal:)
Hi Dave,
Good to hear that you’re OK.
It was on the news here in Thailand and also your pix look pretty wild! It must’ve been a real tough one.
I was in the Air Force in 1961-2 and posted at Onna Point. During my 18 month tour we had three typhoons which to us young airmen were simply exciting occurences. None were particularly damaging to the local population and did no damage to our base - so to us they were fun. There was a private beach and we could go to it even during the height of each storm; not much security in those days, different today I presume! Winds were high and waves were huge, crashing against the cliffs. Exciting and beautiful at the same time. Being a weather buff (note my email address, akweatherman@yahoo.com) I found the storms particularly thrilling. Thanks for your postings, fun to read. Curiosity question: does Onna Point still have an AF base on it?
Guy at the airport - Yeah, there was a bit of a stiff breeze here! In 3 years it was by far the worst I’ve seen here and it’s caused the most damage.
Steve Williams - Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. It’s very different now I believe for military bases during typhoons. The bases have a lock-down as the typhoon passes over, so nobody goes in or out, I believe. I may be wrong though - someone might be able to correct me on this.
Onna Point no longer has an AF base on it, although it seems to still have a small “elephant cage” radar system up there.
Good to hear everything is relatively ok.
Being in Vancouver we couldn’t get in touch with our relatives up north in Higashi for a few days till the phones were back. Heading out to Okinawa in a few weeks for a family visit and some diving. Hoping the reefs held up ok. I’ve heard there was a lot of sand movement and some beaches have been quite erroded.
By the way, any dive site recomendations for fairly novice divers? Maeda point sounds good from what I’ve read but I’m sure there must be some other good shore dives a little less popular? Looking forward to some warm water diving.