[Daniela YT channel- Hello all! My name is Daniela (most people call me Dan), and I am a twenty-something trying to live a life that feels authentic]
TRANSCRIPT.
We're on day one of the typhoon. like really flooding and the water is like at least waist deep. At some points, neck deep. And I don't see any signs of the rain stopping. I have bread. I have one more apple. And I have some pasta. And I have beans. But the electricity is out. There's no boiling water. There's no being able to heat up water. Nothing. So, I'm definitely really nervous. Like, I just genuinely don't foresee when or how this is going to get better.
5 DAYS LATER
Well, I am at the Quay airport. Let me fill you in. Let me fill you in. So, basically I evacuated from my apartment in Quay. What happened was there was a typhoon and then for the most part the typhoon kind of came to an end, but I think a lot of people were really really taken off guard by a second round of really intense rain. I think they're saying this is the most rainfall Vietnam has historically ever had, but also an opening of the hydro dam, which is intentional to further prevent lowland vulnerable, at risk areas from flooding even more dangerously. So, they open the hydro dam and that basically sets off a siren and at that point, you know, the waters went up from maybe like an inch to about a foot and a half on on Sunday night. And I just assumed that was the last of it. You know.
1.55
I went to bed thinking nothing more of it. But the next morning, I woke up to about like 3 and 1/2 ft of water outside of my apartment. And I'm very grateful that I'm on a higher floor. So, there wasn't a risk of the water actually infiltrating my my place. Shortly after that when I realized, you know, the electricity is out. There is no water anymore and I only have a very limited supply of food and also clean safe drinking water that was bottled. And for the last 3 days, basically I woke up and I would check outside my window and the water just kept getting higher and higher every morning.
At one point it was almost five ft. And you know, you just start to lose hope and you're worried about rationing your water. You don't have a stove. You don't have anything to boil. You just have what you have. The only thing you would really hear was the rain, the continued rain, which never ever stopped. And then like evacuation boats. And by day four, I decided I needed to leave um for a couple reasons.
One, I already had a meetup planned in Saigon with some other English teachers. But two, I was running out of water and it was really scary and I was eating maybe 300-400 calories a day. just trying to conserve what little bread and noodles I had. And yeah, I made it out by rescue boat. I am so grateful to the friend I have in my apartment. Unbelievably grateful. He was able to help me not only get a boat, obviously you need to speak Vietnamese to do so, but also he went on that boat with me.
3.35
And we took a 20-minute boat ride through the city and it was just really, really harrowing. like Quay is underwater and I don't know how long it's going to take the city to recover. So, my heart really goes out to everyone there still and more vulnerable groups. And I'm really worried for people because I think it turned into a dangerous situation. It caught a lot of people off guard really fast that Sunday night. but eventually we got to higher ground and I was able to get a taxi with this run's help. And I'm at the airport now and I have been for a few hours, but I smell terrible. I have not showered in three days., I had my first hot meal at the airport. I chugged so much water cuz my body was just so dehydrated.
But yeah, I I feel very lucky, very very lucky and grateful to that friend that helped me. Yeah, I think that's all I really have to say. But I do know that this was my first experience with floods that were that dangerous. Um floods that were that high and floods that are probably going to leave so many people in very very vulnerable situations. And um yeah, I learned I think a lot from this experience.
4.50
I feel definitely a little shaken up still and I feel like it's going to take me kind of maybe a couple days to process, like how scary things got really fast in terms of rationing my water and my food. But yeah, one thing I definitely learned is you are never ever ever above the elements. No matter how resourceful, scrappy you think you are, like if you don't have food and you don't have water, that's it, you know? That's it. And I think I came face to face with that reality for the first time in my life. and it was very eye opening.
the second is sometimes you are lucky enough to meet someone that will do anything to help you. I need to get him like something really really nice and meaningful as a gift because he had, you know, no real reason to do that.
But three, yeah. Yeah, be prepared. Be prepared. I feel like moving forward, I'm always going to have like at least a few water bottles in my apartment. as well as like dried dried foods, although there's a lot I couldn't even eat that you think you would be able to in these situations. Ramen noodles, etc. If you don't have tap water and you don't have an ability to boil it, you can't even eat ramen noodles. So, I think it was just a particularly tricky situation.
6.05
And, you know, your phone is dying, too. And there was someone that had a generator that out of the kindness of his heart just booted it up and let everyone in my apartment building come sprinting at it and plugged their phones in so they could tell their families they're okay, which was just another amazing kind of like act of act of kindness that I saw. So yeah. Yeah, lessons were were learned and I just feel grateful to be safe and you know I got to leave the city center that is basically underwater but so many people didn't. So I'm thinking of them and also what I can do to to help whether that's donating or cleanup actions efforts. I know it's going to take like probably a month for the city to recover just based on what I saw. Suffice to say the last four days were very scary.
7.00
I'm just hanging out on the ground. But yeah, first experience with a natural disaster in the books. In the books. Um I washed off my legs in the airport bathroom with soap and water cuz I had waded through the water when I was getting in the rescue boat. but yeah, I I think I'll see you in Saigon when I get to my hotel and can shower and yeah, just continue to reflect on, you know, the fact that for a lot of people this is reality. This is once a year, twice a year, every year, you know, having to build beds on the second floor of your house because you know the entire place is going to be flooded, you know, and yeah
I think this is something I didn't expect to encounter to be honest while I was here. We had been trained for it and you know, you're always supposed to have a go bag so you can just run out if you need to, but you don't ever think that that's actually going to happen, you know, but when it does [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
END OF TRANSCRIPT
[KE: Everything climate scientists predicted about global warming since the 1970s is coming true, only faster]
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