Typhoons and Izu Oshima

Every year some twenty to thirty typhoons are brewing in the Pacific. Most of them generate around the area of Palau, which thus never gets hit by typhoons. They all head west and hit either the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, or Japan and Korea.

In Japan we just give them numbers and don’t bother with names.

So the typhoon that wreaked havoc on the island of Izu Oshima is known here as typhoon number 26 instead of Wipha or whatever its name in the non Japanese media was.

I find the numbers much more practical. What does a typhoon need a name for?

Anyway. Most of the twenty something typhoons per year don’t reach Japan, but sometimes they take their route north and pay us a a visit.

Since the Pacific sees twenty something of them each year there is nothing special about it.

Most of the typhoons that reach us are not that bad and it’s quite windy and it rains a lot, but usually they last not longer than twenty four hours if at all and they mostly leave us with warm and wonderful weather once they are gone.

Trouble starts when the wind and or rain get so strong that train services are disrupted and when that happens it affects a hell of a lot of people since more or less everybody commutes to work in the large cities via public transport.

I am here for thirteen years now and have seen quite a number of typhoons come and go. The worst one in my memory is not the typhoon 26 of this year, it was the typhoon number 15 (or was it 16?) of 2011, which hit in the afternoon and the office building I work in shook in the gales as if we were having a felt magnitude three or so earthquake. This typhoon splintered a hell of a lot of trees in my favorite park and was very scary. But in principle I find typhoons rather bothersome than frightening. Most of out typhoons are smaller than hurricanes in the Americas and less potent and their general wind speed is slower and thus also the damage they cause.

But, what I have also learned over the years is to not underestimate a typhoon, since they are considerable forces of nature after all as typhoon 26 has just proven in the case of Izu Oshima island. The heavy rain caused a massive landslide that buried half the village of Motomachi under it.

So far 27 people are confirmed dead and 22 are still unaccounted for and are probably buried under the rubble.

The Izu Oshima incident leaves me with a bit of a bitter feeling, since I visited the island for a few days in May during our Golden Week holidays (here is the link to the first of the Oshima blog entries from May). My hotel (the bug infested one) was/is only one district next to where the landslide came down. I expect the hotel to have escaped the landslide only by a maximum of 100 meters, presumably less. Now that feels kind of awkward. I didn’t like the hotel but I liked the island with its big volcano Mt. Mihara that looked pretty awesome – as these photos show.

In the original movie, Godzilla calls Mt. Mihara his home, he sleeps at the bottom of the crater of Mt. Mihara.

The island has a rustic charm and is a bit neglected and its population is rather old. This landslide now will be another blow to the island, since I believe the in general already few tourists will go elsewhere now, at least for a while.

So, even if the typhoons are often not much more than a nuisance, it is a grave mistake to underestimate their force and caution in dealing with them is a good idea.

Of course the local media over-dramatize things, but nevertheless this typhoon and its consequences are a reminder of the potential destructive power of these things. They are still far less scary and dangerous than earthquakes… Just to keep things in perspective. I feel a bit queasy and empathetic though for the people of Oshima, I drove the bus along one of the roads that is now buried under rubble just a few months ago. The pictures of the mountainside that I took from Motomachi port have become historical documents, since a part of the side of the mountain is now gone. You feel different about it, are more involved, when you know the place where a disaster has struck.

I hope Izu Oshima will recover from the happenings soon.