Typhoon Basyang Bashed our Window

Last July 13, Tuesday night, we had one of the worst typhoons to hit us. Rainwise, Typhoon Basyang wasn't by any stretch of a Milenyo magnitude. But I thought our place was directly hit by the wrath of its winds.


Vague Weather Updates

The thing that irked me though is we were completely caught flat-footed. DH and I always tune-in to DZMM on the the radio and in every weather update from PAGASA that day, officials seemed to downplay the storm.

The most I heard was that the typhoon was moving slowly. There wasn't even much mention about wind speed or intensity. And so I pretty much dismissed the typhoon as something that'll come and go.

Afterall, it's just the second typhoon to visit the country for the year. I guessed that the Pacific ocean at this time of the year was just starting to warm up and unleash its fury by September or August.

Of course I was dead wrong.


One Strong Typhoon

Both DH and I were practically awake between midnight and 3 am because the winds were simply too strong to ignore even though everybody else was sleeping soundly.

Even with the power out, we rushed downstairs to take in the laundry left out to dry and attend to whatever else was affected.

We closed all the windows downstairs and then upstairs. But there's this one upstairs window that wouldn't completely close because the TV's outside antenna cable was in the way.

This is the window near my desktop computer. Without the benefit of a flashlight, I had to grope for a way to secure it. I felt a strap that was holding the curtains and hooked it to the window's handle.

A few minutes later, the winds gave a mighty blast and I heard something crash like glass breaking. I went to the computer area just to discover the window I "secured" was wide open and the strap which apparently broke was nowhere to be found.

I reached for the glass pane, and yup, most of it is now gone - outside in a hundred little pieces! Here's a photo of the window glass pane the following morning.



Aftermath and Lesson Learned

The next day, I went down to carefully pick up the glass shards from the ground lest they hurt someone. I heard over the radio how President Noy gave the PAGASA officials a tongue-lashing.

He said there were a few weather updates and the last one was 8 pm I think. I heard that PAGASA official mistakenly announced the storm would hit Aurora, Quezon and skip Metro Manila. Grrr.

In my opinion, PAGASA should've declared Typhoon Basyang as a Super Typhoon.

Ah well. Lessons learned - secure windows before a storm and always have a flashlight nearby. This is to ensure that whatever job you need to do is done right. Refer to the 72-hour Survival Kit. Enough said.