(note: this was written in 1999 or 2000 – I can’t remember exactly when but I was just reading on line someones current experience of an Amber alert so I had to put up this letter about Hong Kong and Typhoon York).
A few weeks ago we had Typhoon Sam cause destruction and chaos the worst of it being the Air China plane that landed on it’s back, killing three and injuring over 200.
Then about two weeks later we were told Typhoon Wendy was coming our way. We waited and waited but Wendy went west.
So you can imagine when I was dashing out the door on Wednesday night to go to dinner at the Grand Hyatt with my husband’s work colleague I was not worried when our apartment guard said ‘be careful Mame a typhoon 3 signal’. I thought ‘Yeah yeah Mr Yu I’ve heard it before’.
But at midnight as I was leaving the Hyatt I said to my friend, as I looked out over the harbour, ‘I don’t think you will be flying tomorrow’. He was wise and changed his plans he stayed an extra day in Hong Kong. Mind you over two hundred flights were grounded.
I woke to what seemed a rather windy morning. My children were clearly off by lunch time, the wind was howling and I decided to move us away from the windows. Around 2pm we taped the windows with packing tape just in case because we had had reports of blown out windows. By now we were watching the news reports coming through every half-hour on the worsening situation. First an amber rain warning in the morning, then it was a three, then suddenly an 8 and within the hour it became a 10. It was that sudden and that intense. Just like a woman giving birth for the first time. Eleven hours of wind, wailing and water.
The boys were sick of videos, channel Pearl had the foresight to play lots of family movies. I brought out a new addition to the train set, which made no difference to my boys, in fact, it nearly caused a riot. They had both refused to have an afternoon nap the wind was so loud. My oldest told me he was scared, I didn’t have the heart to tell him mummy was too.
We didn’t loose our power only our satellite reception and this is because the dish upstairs as we discovered today had swung around. Fortunately it did not look like counter parts on other buildings, an inside out umbrella, with parts missing.
By 9pm the signal was back down to a three, though it was still fairly strong obviously not as strong as earlier. At one stage to the horror of my oldest son I went out on the balcony to video some of the weather. I even taped a jogger with a bike helmet on running up the road avoiding one of the felled trees. It takes all types. On the news we heard about people going down to Queens Pier to watch the waves. I read in the paper this morning of a windsurfer who is reported missing.
All I can say is I’m glad it is over. Today the paper was delivered, the dogs were back out on the streets with their maid, the taxi had resumed their normal fares it was if nothing had happened yesterday, life in Hong Kong had resumed. But for me there was a stillness about Hong Kong, a creepy calm, something I have never experienced before. Very weird. Naturally there was plenty of evidence of destruction caused by York. Trees uprooted, cars and buildings blocked by limbs, lamps broken, windows blown out, debris everywhere it was a mess. All day instead of the hum of cars we heard the hum of chain saws. It will takes weeks for the debris to be removed and weeks before we forget how York turned our day into terror behind a big glass window in Blue Pool Road Happy Valley.
