It's not just the wind, it's the floods and storm surge

We have lived through two bad typhoons and a couple of weak ones causing floods and minor damage since I moved here.

In one, the eye actually went over us in the middle of the night... but that wasn't the worst one: We had another one a week or two before the big typhoon hit the Visayas and wiped out the houses of our relatives there.

This larger typhoon destroyed the almost ripe rice crop, destroyed our chicken farm, flooded the town (luckily no major damage since our home is built higher than the street) and we were without water and electricity for a week.

Our house survived, but our front gate was destroyed, plus some windows, we had rain damage inside from roof leaks, and we lost our nice mango tree in the front yard.

Luckily we had a generator and our own water pump, so all the neighbors were here filling up water jugs and recharging their cellphones. Soon kiosks were set up for cellphone charging and selling water, not in bottles but in five gallon jugs.

Luckily we are in a farm area and could get food.

In the other typhoon, however, the storm was scheduled to be south of Manila and so Ruby attended a concert and returned later in the evening, only to find they got caught in the storm when the typhoon changed course.

They almost made it home, but the high bridge over the river was swamped (20 feet high), so they stopped at a local kiosk/gas station for the night. Then the water kept rising... so they went into the store, and when that started to flood, went  to the roof with others who had similarly parked on what should have been safe ground.

So Ruby and the driver spent the night, in 50 mph winds, in the open, eating chips and stuff that the kiosk owner handed up before he too went up to join them.

so now I'm sitting worrying about my son in Florida. He lived through one hurricane/flood in North Carolina when he helped evacuate a girlfriend's father.

Sigh.

A story that give you an idea of what you are facing if you live there can be found in the book Isaac's storm.



another storm book is Wyatt's hurricane, one of Desmond Bagley's less famous books.

and all the nincompoops who think this is mother gaia punishing Trumpites (or the wrath of god) I say nay: If that were so, then why does the pious Philippines get so many disasters.

and right now, Mexico, China, and India have recent disasters too...