What happened to the unfinished house exposed to Typhoon “Yagi”?
“The Glass is Deforming!”
On the afternoon of September 6th, around 5:30 PM, Yang Taotao, who lives in Haikou, Hainan, received a video from her younger brother. The camera was facing the window of his bedroom, where the wind was gusting strongly and weakly, and the rain was pounding against the glass with a loud noise. Accompanied by tremors, the glass looked like a resilient drum skin, concave and rebounding intermittently.
Yang Taotao began to feel uneasy. To reduce air convection and prevent the glass from being blown out, she, her parents, and her brother stayed in their respective rooms and closed the doors, communicating with each other through WeChat. However, shortly after receiving the video, she heard a loud “bang” and instantly experienced tinnitus. She quickly jumped out of bed, not even daring to look in the direction of the window, and rushed out of the bedroom.
Soon, the kitchen window and her parents’ bedroom window also broke. The wind and rain began to pour in.
The thrilling situation experienced by Yang Taotao and her family also occurred in the homes of citizens throughout Haikou. At around 4:20 PM on September 6th, Typhoon “Moke”, with winds exceeding 17 levels, made landfall in the coastal area of Wengtian Town, Wenchang City, Hainan Province, and continued to move in a west-northwesterly direction. From 6 PM that day, “Moke” entered Haikou, traversing the entire city from east to west and blowing for several hours. During this time, a large number of building windows were damaged.
According to a local press conference on September 10th, incomplete statistics showed that the direct economic losses caused by this typhoon to the four cities and counties of Haikou, Wenchang, Chengmai, and Lingao in Hainan were close to 80 billion yuan. This was equivalent to more than six times the economic losses caused by Typhoon “Rammasun” a decade ago.
After “Moke”, Hainan was hit by typhoons and heavy rainfall, and the empty windows blown out by the typhoon may not have been repaired in time before being flooded with rainwater.
Yun Hong’s professional work is closely related to climate change. The entire floor-to-ceiling window in her home was destroyed during “Moke”. When the change happened right at her doorstep, she realized that she had been “careless”. Before the new window arrived, she temporarily covered the original window position with a waterproof tarp. She now pays more attention to the weather and understands the power of wind and rain better than before.
In Yun Hong’s living room, the floor-to-ceiling window glass was broken, and the window frame was severely deformed.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and post-disaster reconstruction may now serve as preparation for the next disaster. In Hainan, the moment before and after the broken windows may have become a watershed in people’s awareness of climate change.
At the Moment of Broken Windows
More than half a month after “Moke” passed, the windows in Yang Taotao’s home had not been repaired.
She goes to work and comes home as usual every day, seeing the city being rebuilt at an amazing speed. Several times, she felt as if “Moke” was just a dream, but when she returned home and saw the temporary covering on the window – a cutting board – she realized that the experience that night was real.
On the day of the typhoon, after calming down, Yang Taotao soon discovered that the glass window in her bedroom had not broken. It was just that her brother’s bedroom was on the same side, separated by only one wall, so when the window in her brother’s room exploded, she heard the loud noise.
After the window in her brother’s bedroom broke, the kitchen window on the same side and the window in her parents’ master bedroom on the opposite side also broke successively. A strong convection formed inside the house. If the convection was not quickly blocked or reduced, the sliding door in the living room and the enclosed window on the balcony might not be able to withstand it.
The broken kitchen window in Yang Taotao’s home.
The broken window in Yang Taotao’s parents’ master bedroom.
The window in her brother’s bedroom was the most severely damaged and was located on the windward side. They did not rush to repair it. Yang Taotao and her mother faced each other, tightly pulling the door handles of her brother’s bedroom and her parents’ bedroom respectively, to prevent the wind from rushing in more uncontrollably.
Her brother’s bedroom.
Her father and brother then began to figure out how to block the small broken window in the kitchen. In a panic, they used materials available on site, such as dismantled desk partitions, cardboard, cutting boards, and handheld shopping bags, to block the single broken window in the kitchen.
Yang Taotao and her mother couldn’t help but cry. Her mother cried while constantly praying for safety. This was the first time Yang Taotao had seen her so panicked.
About an hour later, Haikou entered the typhoon’s eye. Taking advantage of the calm and windless moment, the whole family quickly repaired the entire broken window in her brother’s bedroom. This time, they directly moved the two-meter-long and 1.5-meter-wide mattress from the bed, leaning it against the still intact aluminum alloy window frame and anti-theft net. They then turned the entire bed frame 90 degrees, using the headboard to firmly prop up the mattress. Fortunately, this repair allowed Yang Taotao’s family to safely weather the subsequent southerly wind until the typhoon completely passed.
On the night of the typhoon, Yang Taotao’s family temporarily blocked the broken window with a mattress and bed frame.
Yun Hong, who lives near the west bank of the Nandu River estuary in Haikou, also experienced a terrifying night.
Yun Hong’s home is on the 16th floor, the top floor of the residential complex. The entire house is north-south oriented, with a distance of nearly 20 meters between the heavy sliding glass door connecting to the balcony and the 3-meter-high, 7-meter-wide floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, without any partitions. The layout and orientation were frequently praised by friends and relatives when talking about this house, but during the typhoon, these advantages immediately became disadvantages.
Before 5 PM that day, the floor-to-ceiling window in Yun Hong’s home had already shown signs of shaking.
Previously, she had been closely monitoring the typhoon’s path on the “Typhoon Path” mini-program and wondered, “The typhoon hasn’t reached Haikou yet, why is it shaking so much?” Since September 4th, Yun Hong had received 8 typhoon warnings from her carrier. On September 6th, work and school in the area had basically been suspended.
She and her family tried to support the window with sofas and chairs but found it didn’t help much. As the wind grew stronger, they hesitated for a while and decided to open a window to let the air flow. They thought this might reduce the force on the window. But as soon as the window was opened, the strong wind rushed in, and soon the sliding door on the other side crashed towards the balcony.
Yun Hong and her family immediately decided to leave. She, her son, daughter, husband, and sister quickly gathered some necessary items and evacuated to her parents’ home on the 12th floor of the same building. At that time, she thought that as long as her family was safe, nothing else mattered.
“My home has been blown into a unfinished house,” she posted on her social media without any pictures. It was 9 PM on September 6th, five hours after “Moke” made landfall in Hainan. Haikou was in the eye of the typhoon, and the wind and rain suddenly stopped. Her husband hurried upstairs to check the situation: the window frame of the floor-to-ceiling window had been broken by the strong wind and fell towards the living room, the glass was scattered everywhere, and large furniture such as sofas, shoe cabinets, and dining tables had been blown out of place, with water covering the entire floor.
At 11 PM, after the southerly wind passed, Yun Hong, her sister, and son returned to their home upstairs. At that time, the entire residential complex had lost power, and the surrounding streets and neighboring residential complexes were also pitch black. They used emergency lights to look inside the house: the southerly wind had turned the kitchen and dining room near the balcony upside down again. The passageway connecting the balcony and the living room was filled with items of various sizes, and there was water and glass debris everywhere.
After the typhoon, family members living downstairs also came to Yun Hong’s home to help clean up. Accidentally, her nephew fell while running on the balcony and cut his hand on the broken tiles from the fallen sliding door, requiring five stitches in the hospital.
The sliding door in Yun Hong’s home fell off and broke the tiles on the balcony.
On September 18th, just a week after “Moke” passed, Haikou was affected by the outer cloud bands of Typhoon “Beb
