Super Typhoon Haiyan OR How I slept through one of the world's biggest storms

Hi all, I thought I might postponed my other planned blog posts to give you an update on how we & Palau fared with super typhoon Haiyan.

Last Tuesday I was out diving at a site called Blue Corner with a great group predominantly from Dayton, Ohio. This site is about a 50 minute boat ride south of Koror, it’s on a reasonably exposed section of the reef and can be subject to very large (sometimes dangerous) swells. For regular readers you’ll recall this was the site of my first sea sick induced spewing incident due to large seas from the last typhoon near the Philippines. Anyway this site almost always has some swell with waves crashing on the reef but last week it was perfectly flat! My fellow guide & I were completely shocked, neither of us in our relatively short time in Palau have seen this area even close to like this. It was so flat that we were able to moor the boat over a dive site called Blue Holes and the guests were able to snorkel and generally float around chilling out. One of our guests joked about it being the calm before the storm. We all laughed with no one taking it seriously. Later that day when we got back to the dive shop we were promptly told about the incoming typhoon Haiyan. I don’t believe the calm seas at Blue Corner were related to the typhoon but kind of a funny due to the comment from our guests. 

So the dive shop decided to dive the following day (Wednesday) but would most likely be closed on Thursday when the typhoon was due to hit late in the day. 

Not expecting a huge impact on Palau, Amanda and I made some basic preparations at home. We stocked up on water and some various food. Wednesday I was out diving but we kept it fairly close doing a couple of wrecks and a cave that isn’t too far from the shop. The conditions on the water weren’t too bad considering what was closing in on us. The dive shop closed early after most staff spent all day battening down the hatches. Amanda and I headed home to make some further preparations but on current data Haiyan wasn’t going to be all that close to Palau. 

As official Australian Volunteers we have a designated safe house at the Aussie Navy compound. The safe house is to be used for issues like natural disasters and political unrest (the latter not being an issue here but can be a major risk in other locations that volunteers are sent to). Seeing Palau is politically stable and “never” gets typhoons we didn’t think we’d ever have to use it. Especially after typhoon Bopha hit Palau in early in December last year, the first in around 30 years to hit Palau.

So back to the story, at around 5pm Thursday afternoon we received a phone call from a friend & partner of the Australian Navy Lieutenant commander on island. The news was not good. The typhoon had been upgraded to a super typhoon and had changed direction and was now heading towards us. Our friend recommended we evacuate to the Navy compound. This was not a tough decision for us, despite the apartment we are in probably being quite safe we took the option evacuate while we could. 

We had been a little slack at home that afternoon so we spend a madcap 45 minutes packing away everything inside the house, moving furniture around, bringing in everything from outside and packing some clothes, computers, passports and other personal items for a possible long stay in the safe house.

By the time we headed across town to the Navy compound at 6pm the streets were very quiet. Weirdly enough the weather still wasn’t particularly bad. Some gusty winds, intermittent rain but whether it was in our own heads or not there was a very strong ominous feeling. It is a weird feeling to know what is coming, the best I can explain it is a calm nervousness.

After quickly moving into the compound we spent the evening having some dinner and a couple of quiet drinks with fellow volunteers, an Australian federal senator (who we met the night before and was now stranded on the island) and our gracious Australian Navy hosts. 

Around 9-10pm the winds starting picking up and by 11pm they were strong. The power dropped to the whole island a few times late in the evening and we heard the odd tree come down. The winds and intermittent heavy blustery rain picked up in earnest towards 12pm, around 3 hours before the super typhoon was to be at its closest. The last report we read before retiring was that we were expecting 300kph winds and the eye of the storm to be around 78 kilometres away. Feeling very fortunate to be in a typhoon proof house with shutters on the windows we went to bed.

Amanda was up all night listening to wind, rain and all the noises going on outside. She told me the following morning it was her scariest night ever! I rather conveniently slept through the core 6 hours! I blame the 6 beers I drank before bed and working 10-11 hour days leading up until the typhoon. More than a few of my friends and family think it’s funny that dogs and roosters keep me awake but I can sleep through one of the world’s biggest storms!

There is a house under there somewhere!

The following morning the view from the navy compound showed minimal damage but we knew we were well protected down the lower side of part of a rock island. Soon enough reports started coming in of various pieces of destruction across Koror but it largely seemed minimal considering the strength of the typhoon. We heard of a massive tree down on a house, a few awnings and roofs ripped off, some signs broken & flung around, a couple of cars damaged and lots of trees and power lines down. Late in the day we ventured home to find it perfectly ok with the exception of no power nor water supply.

We were however very concerned about the small northern atoll island of Kayangel which was due to be the closest to the typhoon’s path. No one had been able to contact them that morning at all so a helicopter was sent up as soon as weather permitted. The result is the island has been mostly flattened, hardly any shelter remains, the vegetation is almost completely gone and now there are some inland lakes. The incredible part about this is that the 69 people who didn’t evacuate somehow all survived. Over the following two days they were all evacuated by boat to Koror. A decision will be made shortly on whether to rebuild Kayangel or consider it not fit for habitation.

The lack of water and power to our house meant we were lucky enough to stay at the Navy compound for a few more days. Our hosts were awesome and we are both very thankful that we had the opportunity to stay there.

Regarding the destruction around Koror the community pulled together quickly to clean up the various debris and most things were back to normal in about 2 days. I’ve been diving again over the weekend and early this week and I’m pleased to say I’ve seen no damage to the reef unlike from typhoon Bopha last year which complete destroyed a couple of sites.

It truly is incredible that considering the strength of this storm and how it came within roughly 24 miles of Koror that there wasn’t total destruction like we are seeing with the Philippines now. We can only assume the rock islands have done a great job of protecting everything around sea level.

The morning after...I swear we really did have a typhoon! Honestly we did!

P.S. A (sort of) funny story about why Kayangel didn’t evacuate. Apparently last year when typhoon Bopha was bearing down on them they prayed endlessly and a local witchdoctor walked out into the sea and did some dance to ward off the typhoon. This clearly worked and the typhoon had a late change of direction and passed to the south (damaging southern islands instead). So this time they madly prayed and the witchdoctor did his dance in the sea again, I guess his powers hadn’t quite recharged since last year.