My hotel was pitching and rolling like a ship in the eye of a storm
“It felt as if the most savage of beasts spawned by Mother Nature was surging all around”
APART from the spatterings of rain on the glass window of my hotel room on the 29th floor of a city centre hotel in Tokyo yesterday morning, there was little sign of the highest category super typhoon to come.
At that stage trains were running and there were a few cars on the roads. In fact, for some time the only other reminder of the monster Typhoon Hagibis heading our way was a sheet of paper slipped under the door with reassurance to guests from the Park Hotel’s general manager.
It said that while the typhoon “may cause some noise and tremors to the building”, it has “a seismic structure designed to withstand strong winds and earthquakes”.
Even by early evening, while the wind had picked up considerably, it was still possible for me to walk onto the pavement outside the hotel without being blown off my feet.
I returned to my room thinking the storm might even have veered off course and missed central Tokyo.
Suddenly, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake jolted the city – and then Hagibis struck.
Its pent-up mega-force energy sent our 33-floor tower above Shimbashi station pitching and rolling like a ship in the eye of a storm.
The girders creaked as the 120mph wind and torrential rain tore at the outside of a building which was now swaying like a huge concrete tree.
It felt as if the most savage of beasts spawned by Mother Nature was surging all around, enraged at not being able to uproot everything in its path.
Thankfully, it was not quite powerful enough to snap the steelreinforced infrastructure of a tower which had a concrete foundation four floors deep sunk into the Tokyo soil – although sometimes it felt like it might be strong enough to render the whole structure above the ground into a pile of rubble.
Trying to write this while the earth was moving under my feet was an eerie sensation, but with fear sensors on full alert and adrenaline starting to kick-in, it was a relief to be fully engaged in doing something.
The building lived up to its billing by keeping Hagibis at bay and ensuring that the sizeable group of resident rugby supporters were safe, but the greatest result there can be now the typhoon is over is that the damage to life, limb and homes throughout this huge metropolis of 38 million souls is limited.
Grim news bulletins from the Tokyo region told of multiple fatalities and over half a million people being evacuated from their homes.
Equally grim will be the damage to World Rugby’s reputation if their decision to cancel matches for the first time in the tournament’s 32year history is because their typhoon contingency plan was not fit for purpose – and at the moment their case looks pretty threadbare.
Given that Japan is the third most typhoon-prone country in Asia it is reasonable to assume that World Rugby had worked on a detailed strategy to reschedule matches affected by extreme weather conditions.
The typhoon season in Japan usually lasts from June to October, and is seen as a fact of life. The scheduling of the tournament, which started on September 20 and continues throughout October into early November, means that it was therefore always in the meteorological risk zone.
Bearing that in mind, and that World Rugby/IRB announced Japan as the host nation a decade ago, they have had an age in which to get a typhoon contingency structure in place – and yet, instead of it being activated, what was wheeled out instead was the woefully inadequate response to cancel games.
The big question it raised was not whether health and safety concerns for players and fans were justified, but whether they merited the cancellation of yesterday’s England v France and New Zealand v Italy last round pool matches, rather than having them rescheduled and/or moved to other venues.
It also led to a furious row which has seen the Scottish Rugby Union threaten legal action over the potential cancellation of their decisive match against host nation Japan scheduled to be played in Yokohama today.
If the match is not played Scotland’s hope of an against-all-odds victory which will see them into the knock-out stage will be dashed, and they will return home with a grievance over the failure to reschedule the match which could embroil World Rugby in a costly court case.
None of this is good for the reputation of the World Cup as the flagship event of the game, especially when the weather conditions in Oita on the southern island of Kyushu, which will host two of next weekend’s quarter-finals, were fit for rugby.
What appears to be lacking here was the detailed contingency planning and flexibility required of World Rugby and the Japanese Rugby Union to make all three games happen by moving them from Tokyo to Oita at short notice this weekend, and playing two games in one day – one afternoon and one evening – and the other the following day.
While only a limited number of supporters will have been able to make travel and accommodation arrangements to get to Oita from Tokyo, many fans said they would have wanted the matches played in front of smaller crowds, or even in empty stadiums, and watched it on television, rather than see them cancelled.
These cancellations have undermined the competitive credibility of the 2019 World Cup, and also killed dreams.
Italy No.8 Sergio Parisse lamented his lost chance to retire in a blaze of glory against the All Blacks, the Scots were apoplectic at the prospect of not being able to challenge Japan for a place in the last eight, while England’s chance of a much-needed Test against France before the quarter-finals went begging.
Parisse and Scotland Rugby Union chief executive Mark Dodson raised the spectre of one law for teams like New Zealand, and one for the rest. The Italian talisman cut to the chase, saying: “If New Zealand needed four or five points against us it would not have been cancelled.”
The chief justification for the cancellations offered at a World Rugby Press announcement on Thursday by RWC tournament director Alan Gilpin was the typhoon’s threat to health and safety.
However, what was notable by its absence was any clear outline of a strategy to get matches played, with Gilpin stressing that all teams had signed up to a participation agreement which allowed for cancellations in the event of severe weather.
Just how many of the fans who have paid a king’s ransom to watch the tournament in Japan were made aware of this stipulation would be interesting to know.
What we do know is that the handling of the matches affected by the typhoon strike has undermined the competitive integrity of a World Cup which up until this weekend had been a success story.