Citizen Journalist Sleeps through a 139-Year Flood

I’m an enthusiastic 54-year-old social media poster. Call me a citizen journalist, if you will. For the last three year, I’ve been studying the mechanics of the media: writing, podcasting and youtubing. I can mix my sentence structures, write without using adverbs, and keep my POV in character. I can also color correct videos, minimize noise in audio tracks, and focus on the good bit with zooms and freeze frames. Ready, set, action!

When Typhoon Saola swept into Hong Kong last weekend, I keenly tracked everything about it: the storm track, wind speeds, high and low tide tims, everything I needed to be ready to capture the best video footage. Then right when the storm was to reach its maximum strength, a 'dry band', a non-rainy part of the storm, appeared and the typhoon lost much of its power. It became mostly a non-event except for a (possibly staged) video of a young woman being swept away by the wind:

After Saola has passed, I realize I will have to wait months or years for another storm of this magnitude, so I take the week off from watching the news and current events.

Thursday night, a rain shower begins right as I leave a gym fitness class. I sprint from building to building to take cover making my way to the tram station. I forgot my umbrella.

When I return home, relieved to not get too wet, I quickly throw together an egg mayo sandwich and sit down in front of the TV. It's been a busy week. I need to learn to slow down. I switch on the Discovery channel and watch a very predictable program about mining gold, or fishing for tuna, I forget which. The bros give each other fist bumps on how kilograms they got out of the ground or the ocean, every so often, and then talk about how much money they made. It takes no cognitive energy to follow the show's storyline.

The rain continues to pound against the window. I shut the curtains and turn up the volume on the TV. I pour myself a glass of Pinot Noir and sit back to watch the night’s big event: the new episode of Only Murders in the Building. There’s a big twist in who lives upstairs at the Gooseberry Theater. I turn back to the Discovery channel and the predictable programming lulls me to sleep.

Before I go to bed, I start the washing machine. Droplets of mist are pushing through an unseen gap in the window frame. I check that the window is tightly securely. A few drops of water won’t be a problem in the laundry room.

At 5 am my sleep is broken by the loud sound of lightning nearby. When I can’t sleep, I turn on the This American Life podcast. I’m back asleep within minutes.

At 8am, the alarm sounds. I turn off the This American Life podcast which is still playing, and hit a 5-minute snooze. I reconsider, turn off the snooze, and set a new alarm for 45-minutes.

At 9am, I groggily stumble out of my apartment and get into the elevator. Walking out through the ground floor, the doorman gives me a look and says, “Be careful.”

“Thanks!” I say instinctively. Be careful? He usually doesn’t say anything. He thinks I can handle a bit of rain? I have an umbrella today.

There’s a light drizzle and the street looks normal. At the main corner, the shops are all closed. Strange. They should be open by now. I walk downhill and pass a bus stop. The long line of office workers on their morning commute that usually wait here are nowhere to be seen.

I reach the tram station, and there are no trams. Did they just leave? I wait for a few minutes, but there’s no sign of incoming trams or the sound of their clanging bells.

Things are starting to feel slightly dystopian.

I walk to work, it’s only 20 minutes. On the main road, no buses pass and there’s little traffic. Only a few people, most who look like building security guards, walk past in the opposite direction.

My coworker said there’s a problem at his train station, and he’s working from home that day. I enter the empty office and turn on the lights. We do IT work for the stock market. I turn on all the monitors: Every stock price displays a “0”. Our program must have crashed. Something is wrong.

I frequently embarrass myself with not understanding our technology well, so I had better do a few checks before raising an alarm with the rest of the team. I check the stock exchange website. “Trading Halted due to weather conditions, update to come by 11am.”

That’s odd, the weather looked normal to me.

I open a local news site, and see a video of flood water up to the top of shop windows. A youth center sign sticks out that I recognize. It’s a few blocks from our office. This video must be fake! Or an old one. I will go out to have a look at that street and disprove this fake news. When I arrive, it rapidly becomes clear from the debris on the street and workers sweeping the wet floor of a coffee shop that something happened here. It's a good thing I didn’t declare “fake news!” on Twitter preemptively.

I post the video I took of the cleanup, but don’t get many likes. What a difference six hours makes!

After being on typhoon standby for days, I’m deeply disappointed I was a ten-minute walk from a 139-year flood and was sound asleep. Or half asleep and listening to This American Life. I must redeem myself.

Two days later, I see that two seaside villages, Big Wave Bay and Shek-O, are still cut off and have been evacuated by boat. Outsiders are prohibited from entering the area.

Is this my chance? I can report from “The Lost Village”. It’s a ten-mile walk from where I live. I’ve done this walk in the past. I shall explore them and write an article entitled, “Entering the Restricted Zone” in the tone of someone entering the Chernobyl restricted zone.

I wind my way through mountain roads and trails that I know well. At a junction, a sign says, “closed due to landslides.”

It probably means “risk of landslide”. What’s a little risk? I can handle it. Everything in life has risk. For the sake of attaining citizen journalist glory, I must reach The Lost Village. I duck under the police tape.

The mountain road stretches ahead and I walk swiftly. The slope towering above on the left side looms large. It appears to be a 60 degree slope. Boulders could come crashing down at any second. I stay on the outside of the road to avoid the boulders, and begin to jog. Rain begins to pound down. It’s been raining all day, and the water is now flowing down over the road. I give up trying to keep my shoes dry and step into water that’s ankle deep in some places.

The more time I spend here, the more risk I have. I hasten my pace. If I can run the last part of this 2-mile road, after ten minutes, it will just be a short walk down to the Lost Village.

There’s a problem.

I study what’s ahead. The road is gone, but the catchwater on the left side hugs the mountain. I could walk through the rushing water, and make it to the other side of the washed away road. What could possibly go wrong?

I remember the last time I looked at my mobile. There was no reception. And there will be no cars driving down this closed road–I had ducked under the no entrance sign. There will be no help coming my way. Studying the washed out road, it’s clear there was only a sandy embankment underneath. Where I am standing right now is probably also sand. I take a few steps back.

I head back. Instead of running toward the Lost Village, I’m now running away from it. In another hour, I’m on a large, safe road descending back into the heart of the city.

I'm not far away from a very large landslide that’s been in the news, but the construction crews don’t let me get close. And everyone and their dog is already here taking photos.

At least I can let hikers know about the washed out road. I post an update on the landslide and its location on Facebook.

Finally! The video receives a like. And then another. And another. As I write this, it has received 106 likes. It might not be much, but it’s a start for this 54-year-old aspiring citizen journalist.