I can’t seem to get off of the tropical storm topic, but they can’t seem to stop coming. Within a few days of Nangka’s dissipation, Saudel would follow in her wake. More rain for the region, more floods, more disasters. I must say that the response has been impressive. So many Vietnamese and ex-pats come together to sandbag beaches, help prepare food for those in need, and really be a community.
We made it through the pandemic together. We will get through this as well. It is becoming increasingly difficult to manage the crisis with continued storms and only narrow patches of clear periods. But the authorities and volunteers are making it happen. I’ve seen some crazy things lately. Buffalo’s washed onto roofs only to be stranded after the water retreats. Soldiers delivering milk to children that have to swim out of their homes to collect it.
Molave On The Move
As many probably know, the next storm to come to our shores is in the form of a category three Typhoon named Molave. Molave is the most recent in a relentless train of storms to hit the region. Number 6 for central Vietnam, number 9 for Vietnam as a whole. However, Molave bears the most strength of the 9 storms so far this season. As I am writing this post a day after landfall, it has been the strongest Typhoon to make landfall in Vietnam in 20 years.
Molave came across the Philippines over the weekend. If I remember correctly, the storm made 5 landfalls there and immediately built strength as it came back out to sea. In Vietnam, over 1 million had been evacuated by Tuesday morning, and the storm was continuing to build strength. Ultimately aiming for Quang Ngai, about 90 miles south of Da Nang.
Further Preparations
The city announced Monday that school was canceled at least through Thursday. A citywide curfew was declared for 6 pm Tuesday. In addition, the city issued a warning to prepare for a forced blackout as the storm came onshore. We did our best to secure the shop. We went to the market to buy food for the next few days and headed home to help our hosts prepare the apartment building. Diem cooked an interesting pot of whatever was left at the butcher. It appeared to be the reproductive organs of some poultry. But I, nor Diem, could be entirely sure.
We did manage to get a few chicken wings, a piece of pork belly, and a couple of the whole quail. But there wasn’t much left as the pre-storm buying had cleared most of the market. It was my birthday. My sweet girls made sure I had a cake to celebrate, and we had a quiet evening in the apartment. By late Tuesday evening, the wind and rain were beginning to build. The night was filled with the constant low howling as the wind managed to find every crack in the steel and concrete building.
Molave Draws Closer
As dawn broke on Wednesday the 28 of October, Molave was less than five hours from landfall. I went downstairs to the lobby, and the oldest son of the apartment owners was staying in the building. He made Diem and me a couple of coffees, and I discussed if and when the storm doors would be opened. “When the city lifted the curfew,” he explained.
All of our kitchen equipment is electric. So I spent the morning preparing many foods that would last till the next day at room temperature. I fried some chicken wings, made crispy pork belly, seared a couple of quail, made sticky rice, rice noodles for a cold noodle dish, some roasted corn, and worked on a few extras like fresh roasted peanuts to snack on and crispy shallots for a garnish on a noodle dish.
I filled our little convection oven with the hot food to hold as long as I could. By 11 am, I finished the last items for our prepared snacks and made one last trip on the roof before landfall. Unfortunately, landfall was either happening or about to happen, and the wind and rain were building to a feeling of a crescendo-like climax. As I made my way inside, I realized that what I had been preparing for all day had just occurred. The Authorities had cut the power to the city.
Riding It Out
For hours the wind and rain pounded the exterior of the building. At the beginning of the outage, even cell service was almost nonexistent. I fell into a coma-like sleep with nothing to listen to or watch updates on in the developing situation. There was just nothing to be done but sit in anxious anticipation, so I drifted off into a deep Typhoon fueled slumber.
I awoke just before nightfall, and the wind and rain had subsided quite a bit. It was around 5 pm, and the storm had already dropped in its category, and now was nothing more than a tropical storm sitting 100 miles inland over Binh Dinh and Diem’s childhood home. I walked out onto the patio, and the streets were again filled with our busy neighbors beginning the cleanup. The all-clear had been announced and the curfew lifted.
The Night
With little to do in the darkness. Diem and I laid on the girl’s bed, as it sat in front of the window, and basked in the cool night breeze. By 8, the sky was clear, and a moon waxing near to full lit up the otherwise empty night. The large apartment building next to us operates a generator, so Diem and I walked over to get a coke and a snack at the store on the ground floor. But mostly because I wanted to take a look at the neighborhood. It was difficult to assess any damage with only a few lights from a generator, save for a down fence near our building. So we made our way back to the apartment and slept in the cool breeze of our open windows.
The power came back on about 2:30 am as we hadn’t turned the switches off. The apartment came to life and shocked me from my slumber. I turned everything off, made sure batteries and phones were plugged in, and fell back to sleep. By 6 am the sun was filling the room with its brilliance through our open windows, and it was as if a wonderful summer day was dawning.
The Morning
Diem and I did our morning chores. Dishes from the night folded laundry, swept and mopped, and made the beds. Then, it was time to head to the shop and assess the situation. Finally, we headed down through the coffee shop and onto the street. From here, things didn’t look too terrible. But the extent of the damage would be clear when we made it closer to the beach.
Driving to work
As we weaved our way through the neighborhood, we had to go off route a few times. Some roads were completely blocked with debris, mostly trees. As we turned onto the coastal highway, it was unrecognizable. The storm surge had washed sand across everything. The road was difficult to find. The Vietnamese military had been deployed and was on the streets beginning the cleanup. It was devastating. Many of the traditional boats that sit on the beach had been deposited in the streets inland. Crews had worked since before dawn to move them to the sides and center of the roadways.
As the coastal road rises and falls, you could see where the surge pushed inland in the lower sections of the city. The main hotel district sat higher than other areas on the coast and was spared the worst of the surge. Many of the buildings across the street from the beach suffered heavy damage, and in some cases, were complete losses. With most of the buildings, massive hotels and resorts meant to withstand such events. It was the small restaurants and shops that absorb most of the energy.
Some of the damage
The Shop
Our shop is two streets in from the beach, and the building has massive steel storm doors which were dropped into place long before the landfall. Our shop suffered no damage. Only a little sand and a few leaves managed to find their way through the cracks and crevices. The house across the street, however, was nothing more than a pile of mangled steel. I felt horrible for the family. Crews were already on hand, helping the family salvage what they could.
I showed a photo of the house in one of my Virtual tour videos, if you have seen them. It was a brief conversation about how property rights work here and all land is public. The dwelling was not officially built, and therefore did not comply with building codes. A husband, wife, two small children, two cats, three puppies, and a flock of chickens once lived there. It just brought me to tears.
Aftermath
As Molave fades into history, Vietnam is not out of the woods just yet. There is already a disturbance set to become a Typhoon that is projected to make landfall near Da Nang this time next week. Then it will be followed up by what, if projections hold, may be the largest Typhoon to make landfall in Asia in quite some time. The early projections show that it could become a monster. It is also projected that the energy at some point will be so depleted there will be nothing left to support any further storms in the South China Sea. Though how many storms that might take is not fully known,
Future Forecasts
For the foreseeable future, it appears that we will continue to average a storm a week in central Vietnam. An absolutely unfathomable situation. I remember thinking 6 weeks ago how cool it was to ride out a Typhoon in Asia, something not too many people can probably say they’ve experienced in their life. But now, the novelty has long gone. The second one was enough. And here we are preparing for number 7 next week, and maybe 8 the week after. It really is starting to cause the tropical blues.
