Supertyphoon Pongsonahit the island of Guam on December 8th, 2002 |
 |
The winds were reported as high as 180 miles an hour and the storm passed directly over us. After a few hours of these high speed winds, everything became calm because we were in the center of the eye of the storm. Here are a few post typhoon pictures for your viewing enjoyment. If you have a high speed connection (cable, LAN, etc.) you can see a short video clip of the storm in action. If you open the video, you probably will have to click the 'Pause' button to allow it time to load, otherwise the video will be real choppy. After it fully loads it will play smoothly. Click here for the video.
 |
As you can see by these pictures cars, trucks, nor busses proved to be much of a match for the storm. |
 |
 |
| Most of us with two cars put our second vehicle in the car ports of vacant houses. As you can see, this car narrowly escaped damage from the uprooted tree. |  |
 |
The storm ignited a huge fire at the port terminal, which led to a gasoline shortage. The fire took four days to extinguish and two more days were required to cool everything down before gas could start flowing again. |
 |
The gasoline shortage led to lines over a mile long at the few gas stations still operating. By the third day, the governor declared a state of emergency and only typhoon recovery and emergency vehicles could get gas. |
 |
Here is the view from the front of our house during a normal rainstorm. |
 |
This is what it looks like when a typhoon gets close. |
 |
And here is what a full-blown Supertyphoon looks like. I was able to take these shots with my video camera as the storm was hitting the back of our house. After they eye of the storm passed, the front of our house received the full brunt of the storm. |
Finally, if you are interested in seeing how big the storm was in relation to the size of our island, have a peek by clicking here.
