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Now
we officially have lived through our first Taifun (or Typhoon),
called Matsa! They are not very common in this part of China,
the last one was in 1997. We really did not notice it much
while it lasted. Yes, it was very windy & it rained like
hell here, but that was basically all. The day after we could
see more of the devastation: a lot of trees had fallen down
(around 2700 according to the papers), see pictures,
we also had more than 30 cm of rain (that's 300 mm in one
night!) which meant flooding of about 20 000 houses & the
airports closed down for about 30 hours so that more than
1000 flights were cancelled!
However
for other people the consequences was bigger, especially in
our neighbour province where 1.24 million people was evacuated,
in Shanghai "only" 43'000 was evacuated. We have also heard
reports that 10 people were killed & that up to 70% of the
vegetable fields around Shanghai was flooded & the crops
ruined.
When
talking about Typhoons & Hurricanes it is interesting to
see the level of reporting on "international" news channels
such as BBC World & CNN. A few weeks ago when we had Taifun
Haitang crossing over Taiwan there was also a hurricane in
the Caribbean called Emily. Hurricane Emily was heading for
Cancun where there are a lot of American tourists this time
of year. Now let's guess which of these storms got all the
attention of the news with special reports, track analysis,
"what if" scenarios etc while the other got three seconds
during the world weather report!
You
are right: Emily!
This
is especially interesting since Haitang killed 17 people &
destroyed around 17 700 houses, causing damage for approximately
974 million USD, while Emily toppled the Martini for some
tourist. (Yes, I know there were big problems also in Mexico
but the reporting stopped as soon as Emily left Cancun. I
guess Mexicans & Chinese rate similarly!)
So
if you never heard about Taifun Matsa, now you know why...
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