Nari By Nature (or, Obligatory Scorpions Reference)

Before departing from work last Friday, the last thing I did was to write Brian Rod and gloatingly wish him a happy Hurricane Humberto. I was at the time sitting near a window, enjoying the cool, windy, and otherwise wonderful weather here on Jeju Island. And though I would not call myself a believer of karma... I am one step closer now.

After a fun (yet expensive) Friday night visit to the local microbrewery, followed by a some-what disappointly tame Saturday night, I awoke Sunday morning around 10:30am to a rather violent storm. The screen outside our window was clattering angrily, and the building itself was swaying just a little in the wind. We could see the rain being whipped around the corner in huge sheets, and found this interesting enough to break out our camcorder for the first time and get some of the tropical rainstorm on film, or at least what we could before the batteries ran out. It turns out we shot too soon, so to speak.

Now, not knowing Korean has many disadvantages. You can not speak to anyone but other foreigners, travelling in cabs or by bus is difficult, and ordering food is a nightmare- for example, I went out alone the other day to eat, and thinking that I had found a nice chicken breast dish, instead got incredibly spicy chicken feet which I couldn't eat at all. Arguably the worst disadvantage, however, is that it is well beyond our reach to listen to the radio or watch the news. Had we been able to, we would have known that a Category 2 typhoon (same as a hurricane, but it instead forms in the Pacific) was bearing down on poor little Jeju Island. It was called Nari, which is pronounced 'nah-ree', but every Korean I heard pronounced it 'nah-dee", so I referred to it incorrectly as Typhoon Naughty for quite some time.

Though we didn't realize it at the time, our room was on the far side of the building from where the storm was hitting, which is why it was pretty surprising when Doug, an Australian who has been a resident of our building for six months, came by and asked if we needed help with flooding. I told him we were fine, and followed him as he continued on his way up to the roof. The roof is essentially a shallow basin encasing some pipes, and I saw that it was quite flooded, and the winds were incredibly strong. It was only going to get worse, though.

We went down the stairs and visited some of the EPIK teachers we knew whose rooms were on the side of the building facing the storm. Opening the first door, we were yelled at to close it right away, as the open door created a vacuum, and water literally gushed through the seams of their windows. Nearly everyone on this side of the building had a lake in their room, while one girl in particular had a stream of water coming from here ceiling. We found out soon thereafter that the apartment above her own was vacant, and with no one to stop the torrent from coming in, the entire place was flooded, with water running under the door out into the hall.

Now, during this time, another resident named Isaac and I decided to go 30 feet down the street to the store. We ran out into the horizontal rain, came to the now-locked doors of the store, and ran back as fast as we could- it was much worse than we thought. But neither of us had food in our apartment, so it was decided that Isaac, who had a car of his own, and had lived and driven regularly in Fairbanks Alaska in weather much worse, would drive the two of us down to the local supermarket, Woori Mart. On the way, we missed a turn, and needed to take the main road down. In doing so, we ended up in a traffic jam and were thus committed to crossing a three-foot deep stream of runoff water raging across the street, and as we were in a small and low budget car, we just barely made it. We couldn't find the way to Woori Mart, and not understanding why all the streets leading there were flooded, we drove around for another 15 minutes, until we realized that not only was there no way to the Woori Mart, but there was no way home. Parking his car on a hill, we set off on foot to make it home and out of the now-peaking typhoon. I was only wearing my swimsuit and a sleeveless shirt, which is by no means the 'ideal' hurricane attire; it is hard to believe how bad rain can hurt at 110 mph.

As we made our way home, we faced the inevitable river, the seemingly omnipresent flood that made it impossible to drive home. Fording through 3 feet of brown rushing water, I struggled to keep my footing, and worried about all the possible diseases swimming around my knees. This river was the first place we saw the destruction this storm was causing, with a line of cars all piled on each other, washed down into a convenience store by the storm.

Running through the tempest for nearly 15 minutes, we finally reached the base of our hill, but decided that having come so far, we may as well go and see if the Woori Mart was opened. Descending the stairs from the base of the hill (which now looked like a waterfall), we saw that the Woori Mart was very, very much closed, and realized why no roads leading to it were opened: the entire street, including the store, were under four feet of water. Cars were drifting alonglike boats in the current, and the shopkeepers who were outside were frozen in dismay, unable to stop the rising tide.

Soon after going home to report what we had seen, a group of the other guys wanted to go out and see the Woori Mart River and the 12 car pile up we had passed on our way home. The storm had just come to it's eye, and though still a strong storm, it was nowhere near as rough of a journey. While walking down the stream again, now slightly shallower, we passed a Buddhist temple whose wall had collapsed when two cars, a taxi and a minivan, had been swept into it. The monk told us, as far as we could gather, to go home because the storm was about to come back in full force. The orange grove on the way up the hill, tucked away in a low area between two major roads, was utterly under water, and all the trees had been levelled.

We headed home, and finding that, conveniently enough, the store 30 feet from our apartment building had opened it's doors again, we bought the rice, ramen, and beer we needed, and having thus finally completed our errand, went inside and waited for the storm to die down.

It was only after several hours had passed that we were able to take our cameras out into the city, the rain having since stopped. At first I felt bad for taking photos, especially as a foreigner, but many of the Koreans were doing the same, and very few of the shop or car owners were on the scene yet, so we discreetly documented the moment. The river had absorbed into Jeju's porous volcanic terrain, and though it was far less dangerous and frightening than our first visit, the destruction was still very visible. These photos are mostly from the Woori Mart stream, post-flood, though some are from elsewhere, and will be thus noted.







These next three are of the Buddhist Temple:




A store owner draining out his shop:


More car-nage (sorry, I know it's sort of an insensitive pun):



An underground car garage. Every car, including one of our friend's motorcycles, was completely underwater:


By far the strangest state of an automobile we saw. I can't imagine how this happened:


The ground was soaked with oil and gasoline:


Pile-ups:




I believe this house was already on it's way out when the storm hit:


The flooded orange grove:


The former site of the 3-foot deep river we walked through on foot:


Just so this whole thing isn't a downer, here's some ice cream we had the other night... and yes, that is corn:


Despite having record-breaking rainfall, the schools on Jeju were not closed, so I still had work today. And while I was at work today, I was warned that another typhoon is on its way. So... we'll just have to see how this all works out, I guess.