On September 16th (Sunday), we experienced our first ever typhoon. Before the typhoon, I had a bit of chat with other long term residents of Hong Kong and they were pretty relaxed so I wasn’t too worried. But Mangkhut was a very violent typhoon, it was classified as a super typhoon. And as it turned out, it was the more violent typhoon in the last 50 years. A lot of hard core Hong Kongers had never experienced anything like that. I think Hong Kong had been lucky, as there were only material damages: fallen trees, broken windows, scaffolding down, but no casualty.<\/p>\n
Le dimanche 16 septembre, nous avons v\u00e9cu notre premier typhon. Avant le typhon, j’avais discut\u00e9 avec d’autres r\u00e9sidents de longue date et ils \u00e9taient plut\u00f4t d\u00e9tendus. Du coup, je n’\u00e9tais pas trop inqui\u00e8te. Mais Mangkhut \u00e9tait un typhon tr\u00e8s violent, class\u00e9 comme un super typhon. Il s\u2019est av\u00e9r\u00e9 que c\u2019\u00e9tait le typhon le plus violent des 50 derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es. Beaucoup de gens du coin n\u2019avaient jamais rien vu de tel. Je pense que Hong Kong a eu de la chance car il n\u2019y a eu que des d\u00e9g\u00e2ts mat\u00e9riels : arbres d\u00e9racin\u00e9s, branches cass\u00e9es, vitres explos\u00e9es, \u00e9chafaudages d\u00e9truits, mais pas de victime.<\/em><\/p>\n We had just moved in in our flat the day before the typhoon. So luckily we had a lot of things to keep us busy. The wind started howling during the night or early on Sunday morning and it didn’t stop until Monday morning. This noise gets under your skin. It is always there and it is like a sword above your head. It means that maybe your windows are going to blow up, or maybe your building is not going to hold. It’s the noise of the wind that kept me awake during the night.<\/p>\n Nous avons emm\u00e9nag\u00e9 dans notre appartement la veille du typhon. Heureusement, nous avions beaucoup de choses \u00e0 faire le 16 septembre. Le vent a commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 souffler tr\u00e8s fort pendant la nuit de samedi \u00e0 dimanche et il ne s’est arr\u00eat\u00e9 que lundi matin. Ce bruit est obs\u00e9dant. Il est constamment l\u00e0 et c’est comme une \u00e9p\u00e9e au-dessus de votre t\u00eate. On se demande si les fen\u00eatres vont tenir ou si le b\u00e2timent ne va pas s\u2019\u00e9crouler. C’est le bruit du vent qui m’a emp\u00each\u00e9 de dormir.<\/em><\/p>\n Outside the window, we could see the trees moving so fast and lots of things flying in the air. It is quite something when you are on the 31st floor and things fly out of your window! There were also torrential rain. A powerful stream cascaded non-stop on the mountains behind our building. Every couple of hours, I was checking the typhoon’s trajectory to see if it was going away. The worst was around lunch-time, 12 \/ 1 pm. We had lunch in front of the big windows in our main room. In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea if a window had blown out. We tried to keep it casual and enjoy our time together but we were all worried.<\/p>\n Des fen\u00eatres, nous pouvions voir les arbres bouger tr\u00e8s fort et beaucoup de choses voler dans les airs. C’est impressionnant de voir des choses voler par la fen\u00eatre du 31\u00e8me \u00e9tage ! Il y avait aussi une pluie torrentielle. Un puissant torrent cascadait dans les montagnes derri\u00e8re notre b\u00e2timent. Toutes les deux heures, je v\u00e9rifiais la trajectoire du typhon pour voir s’il s\u2019\u00e9loignait de Hong Kong. Le pire du typhon a \u00e9t\u00e9 autour de l’heure du d\u00e9jeuner, vers 12\/13 heures. Nous avons d\u00e9jeun\u00e9 devant les grandes fen\u00eatres de notre pi\u00e8ce principale. Avec le recul, cela n\u2019\u00e9tait pas la meilleure id\u00e9e du si\u00e8cle, surtout si une vitre avait explos\u00e9. Nous avons essay\u00e9 de rester d\u00e9contract\u00e9s et de profiter de notre d\u00e9jeuner dominical, mais nous \u00e9tions tous inquiets.<\/em><\/p>\n