My Cup Runneth Over
September 19th, 2007 by StephWell, there’s been another water incident, only this one wasn’t confined to my high school. Last weekend some sort of typhoon passed over the great state of Akita, and we took a little bit of a beating. As it was a 3 day weekend, I missed most of the storm warnings, though I could tell something was up. As far as I knew, we just got a lot of rain, nothing special. When I arrived at school on Tuesday morning, I heard a slightly different story.
I was a bit confused when my co-teacher told me that the school was being closed because of wind. The weather outside didn’t seem so severe, and I’d been in much stronger winds in Noshiro before. My confusion escalated to alarm when I heard that the teachers were required to stay at school even though the students were sent home. Our school building is, let’s say, on the crumbly side and is currently undergoing extensive renovation. When I heard that something was dangerous enough to cancel class, but that the teachers had to stick it out, images of being buried alive in a pile of rubble flashed before my eyes.
Which is when I heard about the evacuees in the gym. And the pieces started to fall together… we weren’t bracing ourselves for wind after all. The Yoneshiro river which runs through town was full to the point of bursting, and things were starting to get wet. Things like entire rice fields and houses. I sat back and took it all in for a moment. Flood? Where was I when all this happened?
As school was technically closed for the day, I had to go out and forage for my lunch. My usually peaceful town was abustle with traffic. Restaurants were closed. Police had blockaded now-underwater river-adjacent streets. I’m told that snakes and frogs lined the retaining wall, fleeing from the swollen river as the water inched upwards. Isn’t that some kind of sign of the apocalypse?
Luckily, Noshiro and the Akita river area in general is built for this sort of thing, with wide flood plains. Nevertheless, over 25,000 people in Akita have had to evacuate their homes. Entire bridges are missing a little farther to the southeast. Let’s hope that typhoon season ends soon so we can all dry out a little.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:01 am
Wow! Impressive photos. I read about the typhoon, and saw that it was hitting China with severity, but I thought you guys were above the danger area. I guess you were, actually. Where had you gone for the weekend that you were actually away from the storm?
October 19th, 2007 at 11:03 am
We weren’t away from the storm so much as away from people who would inform us that a storm was coming… ie. it hit on the weekend when I was away from work.