OK, it wasn’t a stroll, it was going out of the house to place plastic and sandbags in front of the front door, and it was only violent storm speed wind were we lived, while the hurricane strength winds were registered 10 km away.
The wind was blowing directly at our front door, pushing water underneath, and getting under the hardwood floor. I got tired of constantly mopping it up every three minutes, so I decided to be Mr. Stupid and fix the problem.
The winds had died a bit, so I went out, put down a plastic sheet and made impromptu sandbags with plastic shopping bags and my neighbor’s sand.
Project finished, I went to return back through the kitchen door on the side of the house, and just when I turned the corner from the front, the winds picked up.
Damn. Them winds can blow. No longer protected by protected by being in front of the building, I was caught in the open, with the winds rushing straight down the side.
I instinctively crouched, getting low to avoid being blown over. Bye-bye new glasses.
Opening the kitchen door was easy, it opens outward and like a sail, directly into the wind. Keeping a hold of it while the typhoon wanted to rip it off the hinges was an interesting battle.
We’re in typhoon target zone here on the east coast of Taiwan. We’re a few km inland but nothing substantial between us and the sea. We asked about typhoons when we bought the place last year, after the typhoon season, and got the assurances that the windows were typhoon rated.
Enough things kept bumping around to make sure we didn’t sleep. I had build a wood structure for our washing machine on the third floor balcony, the one facing directly into the mess. The top of that structure didn’t last, but the washing machine wasn’t blown away as it’s protected. It just got a really great washing job itself.
We had had the kitchen door installed after the concrete house was build, so they had to punch a huge hole where there had been a window. They hadn’t done the waterproofing right and we had had some leaking before. We were just in the middle of having it redone, which is good, because it looks like their patch didn’t work.
We had been fighting with the developer, and the foreman had assured us that the repair would be “better than new.” Not so, it looks like.
All-in-all, it’s one of these things where it could have been a lot worse. No serious damage, and a learning experience.
