House of Chaos

Monday, October 8, 2018

Random

This kid had a doctor's appointment at 8am on Thursday. Since we hadn't hit TCCOR-1C yet, it was still on. Yay! We squeezed it in there before everything shut down.

The look Levi gave me when I asked if he wanted to go outside during Typhoon Kong-Ray.

What I did during the typhoon!

I had to get the kids out of the house after too many days cooped up inside. So we went to the Japanese store and got delicious breads at the bakery. Callie was thrilled with her long baguette.

And silliness ensued.

Activity Day Cuties

But first... A girl and her dog.

They had an Activity Day activity in the spirit of the Bake-Off shows... but with crafts.

The girls were given 5 items that had to be used, and a ton of other items they could use. The theme was "Typhoon" and they could do whatever they wanted.

This was Delaney's dream activity.

Delaney did a cute Diorama.

And she won first place for her use of crafts.

Rylee won first place for representation f a Typhoon. (And the judge did not know who had made them!)

So two of our cars sat out the typhoon in the driveway and had zero damage. They were not even dirty. The kids scoffed at the long lines at the car wash and I confess, I wondered why they were so eager to wash their cars.

Then I picked up the van. The van had been sitting in the Auto Car Center's parking lot for a week, and spent Typhoon Trami there as well. I was annoyed to see that it had a fresh dent and had lost a rain guard over the driver's side window. I would not have been so irritated if that had happened while it was at home, but it was the insult of it being at the Auto shop and getting damaged that irked me.

The dent doesn't look awful here. The crack isn the paint is the worst part, because it will rust.

And it doesn't look awful, but the window looks naked without the plastic piece over it.

Now, Typhoon Trami left on Sunday. On Wednesday Typhoon Kong-Ray moved in.

We were carefully following the typhoon projections to see if we had school or not. The typhoon had been a Cat 4, but was down to a Cat 1 by the time it sideswiped us.

We had no school on Thursday and the worst of it hit Thursday night. No school on Friday, although everything opened up around 2pm. The typhoon was not bad at all. Barely enough wind to qualify as a Typhoon at all and it disintegrated into a tropical storm as it left. Zero damage. So it was a great typhoon!

Monday, October 1, 2018

Typhoon Recovery

Sunday morning at 2am we went into TCCOR-Recovery, which means the typhoon is past and essential personnel are out evaluating the hazards and cleaning up. There is no church till All Clear is called, and it wasn't called till noon (so no church for us!). We spent the morning cleaning up all the stuff blown down in the storm. And it was brutal on the foliage.

This is the next door neighbor's house. I thought it would be easier to see the trees that fell in their yard, but you can't. They lost two biggish trees and a scrubby tree. You can kind of see our house there on the right.

Callie selfie with Levi. She wants you to see the crazy hair, thanks to humidity and wind.

My sad banana tree. Callie is ready with the machete!

Callie may have run off with my phone and taken pictures. Levi featured prominently.

Levi enjoyed chewing on pieces of the banana tree.....

....while I hacked it up. I wanted to cut out all the dead limbs, because once they die and dry out, they are tough and leathery. When they are fresh, they slice so nice.

My manly helper. We hauled a lot of debris to the curb.

Silly girls!

Callie and her selfies!!

What the banana tree has been reduced to.

Hmmm.... I may have an unhealthy attachment to my banana tree.....

Rylee wanted you to see just how windy it still was!

And this just makes me laugh.

Someone else took this picture, but i thought it was pretty awesome. I think 250,000 people were without power when they typhoon ended. They had it down to 130,000 by Sunday afternoon. Even now, on Monday evening, a few people are still without power. A lot of transformers went down and poles came down too. It is a bit of a mess in some areas. But the Japanese workers are awesome and dedicated.

Typhoon Time!

Typhoon Trami came to visit! Thursday the warnings went out. We picked up the outside stuff and tied up the plastic storage shed. I felt pretty good about things.

Just to give you an idea.... Category 2 Typhoon, moving along at 3-8 miles an hour.

There was a lot of warning and lots of info. My favorite typhoon watch page is this guy. If you want to see what's happening here or check out cool videos and info on the typhoon, you can go to FB and look for Okinawa Typhoon Pics & Info. They are awesome.

The phones all kept going off with more dire warnings. Having 3 phones (even ones with no cell plan!) all going off at top volume is a little alarming! And then you have to run it through Google Translate to make sure you are good. Mostly it was flood warnings and info on where to evacuate.

We got to watch the banana tree get blown to the left all morning on Friday.

And I need to mention that neither Dan nor I can move this shed. It is heavy. There is stuff inside and sandbags on top. We wanted to get a strap underneath it but could not get any leverage to slide anything under it. We also could not move it at all. However, they wind blew it to the edge of the patio area.

And then blew it back!

How Levi spent the typhoon. He went out early Saturday morning and nearly blew away. He did not want to go out again! The noise made him nervous and he was worried. So he didn't want to be too far away.

Around 2pm on Saturday the Eye of the Storm passed righ over us. It was so amazing! Screaming banshee wind died down to nothing and the rain stopped and it was lovely outside!

Of course we ignored all the "Do Not Go Outside" warnings and went outside. We assessed the damage and cleared some fallen shrubbery. And Marian wanted a photo with this.

We share this driveway with the neighbor. The tree on their side fell across the drive and very narrowly missed hitting their silver car (which you can just see poking out in front of the light blue car, which is Josh's car. And yes, the dent came with the car.).

My poor banana tree! And one happy dog, to be able to run around and pee on stuff without getting down away.

In case you like stats, here is the wind report. Another agency in a different location had winds of 120mph. I think there was about a foot of rainfall as well.

After 2 hours the Eye finished going over the top of us and the winds began again and my poor banana tree was battered the other direction by the wind. (Spoiler Alert, it doesn't look like this anymore!) We had another 12 hours of beating wind and rain after that. But it was old hat by then.

So we survived the storm. We were safe and dry and never lost power. For us, it was a grand adventure of movies and typhoon snacks. Some were not so lucky. I have compiled some of my favorite photos people have shared on FB so you can have a better idea of how it was:

There were a few similar photos. Although most were not as foolish as this guy, who left the net up on the trampoline. Really, they needed to remove the net, flop the trampoline and sandbag it. But now someone just got a free trampoline! They say the first rule of typhoons is that whatever lands in your yard is yours to keep! But if you don't want it, you have to release it into the storm before it is over.

The lower lying areas had a bit of flooding. Areas by the seawall. We didn't have any flooding on base that I know of. Some of the lower streets flooded a little, but not up to the houses.

This shed belongs to the guy across the street and a few houses down. He had it strapped down tightly, but it isn't enough. There were at least 10 similar shed pictures posted.

The seawall. What's impressive here is that it blew the bricks off. And some poor shuck parked his car on the side of the seawall and it did not fare well.