A typhoon is a strong tropical cyclone that occurs over the tropical ocean, and the South China Sea is a high-risk area for typhoons. Typhoons are formed by the direct exposure of the tropical sea surface to the direct sunlight that causes the temperature of the sea to rise, and the evaporation of the sea water forms water vapor, and the colder air around it flows in to replenish and rise again, and so on, so that the whole air flow continues to expand and form a wind. Due to the vastness of the sea, the circulation of the air flow continues to increase, and the diameter even expands to hundreds of kilometers, so that it evolves from quantitative to qualitative to typhoon. Farmers in Guangdong and Hainan have a deep impression of typhoons, and the second half of each year is the peak time for typhoons. When we were educated youth, we were in the southern farm in Qiongzhong County, Hainan, where the power of the typhoon was still huge, and after each typhoon, what we saw was a miserable scene. At that time, the construction of farms was still very backward, and the houses lived in were mixed tiled houses and straw houses. Whenever a typhoon comes, people have to stop and do the work of preventing the typhoon. In fact, it is to press some wooden trusses onto the grass roof, and to press stones on the roof of some tiled houses that are not covered with tiles and mortar (tiles are used instead of tiles). The second is to inform everyone that when the typhoon comes, they should withdraw from the tiled house and take shelter in the grass house.
After arriving at the farm for a while, we have become Xi to typhoons. Generally, we can face typhoons with little intensity, but we dare not take strong typhoons above level 12 lightly every time. When a strong typhoon came, we all had to take shelter in the grass hut. At that time, no cement was used in the construction of tiled houses, and even the lime used in the mortar was replaced by ash made from shells, which had low adhesion, and some houses were built with irregular stones mined from the mountains. Therefore, once the roof of the tiled house is washed by rain for a long time, it may collapse if it is blown by strong winds. The construction of the grass house is to use thick stumps buried deep in the ground to make pillars, and the trusses on the house are nailed to each other with horse nails, which is not easy to collapse. Another strong typhoon is coming, and the center of the typhoon is still passing through Qiongzhong County, where we are located. The winds were strongest in the afternoon, when the wind and torrential rain raged mercilessly on us for a long time, and we had already taken refuge in the grass huts. Looking out through the crack in the door, the hurricane was whistling from the southeast one after another, and the heart was tightening with a huge wind howling higher than a gust of wind. The dense rain line was at an angle of 20 degrees to the ground, sweeping like countless bullets, and the raindrops hit people with the help of a huge wind. At this time, they can't stand outside at all, so they can only hide in the grass hut that may be blown down and listen to their fate. At this time, the communication between the people had been blocked, but our company commander Li Xianzhu was driven by a sense of responsibility to go to every room in the tiled house to check if there were still people there. When he was walking hard outside the house, the wind suddenly increased suddenly, blowing unsteadily on his feet, and he fell back more than ten meters, forcing him to turn back and follow the wind and immediately walk into the house next to him to take refuge.
Typhoons in the South China Sea must have rotated in an anticlockwise direction, caused by the Earth's eastward rotation. Therefore, there must be times when the wind direction changes in the place where the typhoon passes, and it is often when the wind direction changes that the destructive power is the greatest, and most of the houses and trees break down at this time.
There will be a transition time for the wind to turn, during which the wind will weaken a lot, even only 4 or 5 winds, and if it is the eye of the typhoon, there will even be a short period of calm. Half an hour later, the wind direction shifted from southeast to northwest, and then gradually increased again. Hiding in the grass house, I heard the sharp wind howling and the ** sound of the tree poles breaking one after another from time to time, and some timid ladies hiding in the corner were shivering, praying for a safe pass. At this time, a more violent wind blew, and in an instant, the entire roof of the house was blown to the east by more than a meter, and people thought that the grass house was going to fall and immediately ran out. Fortunately, the pillars of the grass house were buried deep enough not to be blown down, but the ten pillars were all skewed in the same direction by a full 20 degrees, and the wind also tore the mud wall of the grass house at the same time, and the huge wind force poured in at the hole in the torn wall, and removed a piece of the thatch on the roof near the hole in the wall. We were already soaking wet when we ran outside the house, and after the horror we each ran to the small grass hut that had not yet been destroyed. The typhoon was finally overtaken in a panic, but fortunately the personnel were not injured.
Typhoons also carry torrential rains, and anyone who lives in the mountains knows that a long period of heavy rain will inevitably cause the river to swell and block traffic, and even if there is a bridge, the flood will overflow the bridge deck. I remember that once when I was in the 17th Company, there was a typhoon, the flood did not recede for a long time, and the company's food stock was gone, so we could only rely on cassava to satisfy hunger. Typhoons carry heavy rains for a long time, and they are bound to bring flooding. In low-lying places, some houses, pig houses, etc. are often affected by floods, and some pigs, poultry, wood and even furniture that have not had time to be transferred will be washed away with the floods, so after the typhoon, sometimes even before the rain stops, some bold educated youths will run to the river to fish for wood and dead pigs, and they rely on the good water to risk being hit by trees in the turbulent river to catch dead pigs. The reason is that life at that time was too hard, and we couldn't eat meat for a few months, and we couldn't even eat vegetables for months during the typhoon season, so the dead pigs also had a big ** for us, and we didn't hesitate to risk it to salvage.
The typhoon was followed by intense relief work, but fortunately, there were many young and strong workers at that time, and the repair of the houses was completed quickly. The farm is mainly planted with rubber, and the rubber forest after the storm is a mess, and the rubber trees are crooked, making it difficult to move an inch. However, it is necessary to deal with the injured gum tree as soon as possible, otherwise the injured roots and broken joints of the tree pole will rot and cause diseases after a long time, so the work at that time is both intense and hard. The uprooted gum tree is easy to deal with, trim the roots, cut off the leaves and branches, and replant it. The most difficult thing is to dig a hole next to the roots, cut the injured and torn roots, cut off the leaves and broken branches, and then straighten the tree by shouldering and pulling it with a rope.
The most dangerous thing is to cut off the tree pole on the crooked tree, climb up the tree two or three meters high, hold the tree pole in one hand and the plate saw in the other hand, first saw below the part to be cut, and then sawed from above after sawing almost enough. The wood of the rubber tree is brittle, so you should be extra careful at this time, often after sawing it two or three times, it will snap and break suddenly, and the tree pole that was bent by the crown will suddenly bounce up after removing the weight, and the people on the tree will have the possibility of being bounced down and injured.
Typhoons occur every year, but the most intense and most severe was Super Typhoon No. 7314 on September 14, 1973. That typhoon was the most intense typhoon since the founding of the People's Republic of China to this day, and the disaster caused by that typhoon to the people of Hainan was also unprecedented.
On the evening of September 13, it was the Mid-Autumn Festival (the 17th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar), the autumn breeze was cool, and the bright moon was in the sky. That night (0 morning on the 14th), the typhoon made landfall from the now famous Boao with almost no preparation, and the wind swept through seven counties of Qionghai, Wanning, Ding'an, Tunchang, Baisha, Changjiang and Dongfang. The maximum wind speed of the typhoon is 40 ms (15), and the central wind of the typhoon at the time of landfall in Boao is 70 ms (18).Although Qiongzhong County was not in the area where the typhoon center passed, the damage it suffered was also the worst since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
In those two days, I happened to go to the field department to do business, and by the way, I went to the Guangzhou educated youth office of the machine transport company. The arrival of the typhoon also trapped me in the machine luck company, and when I had nothing to do, I closed the door and played poker.
Suddenly, a violent gust of wind blew the door open, and the door had been bolted tightly, but the force of the wind still blew off the iron nails that held the latch in place. As the door opened, the wind and rain rushed in, and I was closest to the door, and I closed the door immediately. One hand is no longer enough, and with both hands trying their best, they can't withstand the power of the wind and can't close the door. At this time, Wu Shu, who was on the bed, also hurriedly ran over and joined forces to close the door, and used two hoes to kill the door.
Within minutes, the door was blown open again. As the door blew open, there was an instant light overhead. When I looked up, there was no tiles left overhead. A few of us in the dormitory began to panic at this time, for fear that the house would collapse, and someone suggested rushing out immediately, I looked up again, and the strong gusts of wind had not yet weakened, and I saw a lot of tiles flying up and down in the air like pieces of paper, and it was quite dangerous to go out at this time, so I had to wait for the opportunity. Each of us first found a bucket to put on our heads, and when we found a gap between the two gusts of wind, the wind was a little weaker, and we immediately rushed out. Rushing outside, countless rain lines wrap around you like a veil, blocking your view, and the roaring wind hides the cries of people, and the typhoon at this time is like a black hole that swallows everything. Everyone also had no time to care about others, holding the bucket covering their heads with both hands, shouting loudly to each other, hunched over and walked towards the only concrete flat-roofed house in the outfield a few hundred meters away.
Qiongzhong County is not in the area where the center of the typhoon passed by, and we have been hit so hard. The damage suffered in Qionghai, where the typhoon made landfall, was even more severe. The typhoon raged in Qionghai overnight, leaving behind fear, and the entire territory of Qionghai was almost in ruins.
Later, from the data, we saw that Typhoon No. 7314 was recorded as follows: Boao Port was in the place of typhoon landfall, and the storm swept mercilessly through the estuary of the Sanjiang River, which later became famous. Xu Zhenhuan, who has guarded the beacon lights for more than 30 years, has personally experienced the power of typhoons: hundreds of kilograms of aluminum alloy lamp covers have been torn, the light piles that flicker day and night have been destroyed and cannot be used, and the strong winds have set off huge waves that have hit the seaside town of Boao. Several fishing boats weighing more than 10 tons in Boao Port were lifted ashore by the wind and waves, displacing dozens of meters. In the compound of the agency, a spiky tile was blown away by the wind and embedded like shrapnel into a hard coconut tree pole near the compound of the county party committee, up to 2 centimeters deep. A county party committee cadre pulled out hard for a long time, but he didn't move.
In Jiaji Town, a coconut tree was uprooted and hung on a large banyan tree next to it. On the county people's stadium at the north gate of Jiaji Town, a big truck weighing seven or eight tons was blown several meters away from the place by the wind and turned upside down. The chimney of the 350-ton Jiaji Sugar Factory crashed to the ground in the strong wind, and there was hardly a chimney standing in the entire Jiaji city behind the wind. In Jiaji Town, dozens of high-voltage power poles made of reinforced concrete were broken by the strong wind, and some were twisted into twisted shapes. Where the typhoon passed, urban and rural houses collapsed, the number of people was heavy, the loss of various materials was innumerable, transportation, water supply, power supply, and communications were all interrupted, Jiaji Town was almost razed to the ground, and the entire town was paralyzed.
The typhoon, the strongest typhoon to make landfall in China, brought heavy damage to Hainan Island, with 903 deaths in the entire Hainan region, especially in Qionghai. According to territorial statistics, the death toll in Qionghai reached 771, with 1,531 seriously injured and 3,825 lightly injured. More than 50,000 houses in Qionghai County collapsed, and 100,000 houses totaled more than 600,000 square metersThere are 270,000 half-collapsed houses, totaling more than 90,000 square meters, and 110,000 houses with serious roofs, totaling 393,000 square meters. After the typhoon, the Communist Party of China and the Military Commission immediately sent a message of condolences to the Hainan District Party Committee, the District Revolutionary Committee, Qionghai and other county party committees and county revolutionary committees and expressed their deep concern. The condolence telegram said: "We will immediately send a condolence group and a medical team to the disaster area to express condolences and condolences to the families of the victims, and assist you in carrying out the first class for the injured and sick due to the disaster, and make arrangements for production and life in the disaster area." "At that time, we also received a letter of condolence at the Southern Farm.
Decades have passed, and whenever the educated youth of our farm get together, they will sigh when they talk about Typhoon No. 14 of that year. As far as typhoons are concerned, there really isn't much we can do about what nature is so unbridled against us.