1966 – The building swayed a couple of feet under the tremendous force of the South Easterly Wind, and I felt a shiver ran down my spine, my heart poised to jump out of my chest. Yet I was on solid ground, the ninth floor of a ten stories concrete residential building. That whole morning had seen an unabated downpour of rain and a 150 kilometer per hour whistling gale force. This was my first encounter of a Hong Kong Typhoon.
Typhoon bending trees on the streets of Hong Kong
“Don’t worry Uncle,” said my nephew noticing my pale face and sensing my anxiety and fear, “all highrise buildings in Hong Kong are built this way, they are designed to sway a couple of feet when under attack by the typhoon. If the buildings are too stiff they may snap under the force.”
Many years later I read James Clavell’s novel “Noble House”. Therein was a scene of a landslide and a highrise collapse caused by a typhoon, killing many of the residents. The building collapse was not a fiction, there was an actual collapse of a residential building on Hong Kong mid-level Kotewall Road in 1972. Sixty seven people killed. I remember this well because an ex-colleague of mine was living there and he died as a result. Miraculously and blessingly, his wife and a small baby were spared death and rescued.
1972 Hong Kong Kotewall Road Disaster
Hong Kong had always been plagued by typhoons, so were Philippines and Taiwan. Most typhoons are formed and blown from the East and South-East across Taiwan or Philippines into Hong Kong, Macau and China Guangdong Province. Each year six or seven typhoons of different degree of severity hit Hong Kong, causing landslide, flooding, property destruction, sinking boats and death. A no-name typhoon in 1937 killed eleven thousand people and typhoon “Ruby” in 1964 killed seven hundred. Thanks God, today after painfully learning how to deal with this tragic misfortune, the casualty figure is insignificant, heart breaking no more.
For over 100 years a system of typhoon warning, with some alterations made in between, was in place in Hong Kong. Before the advent of modern communications, red balls were raised on flag poles located at strategic points around the Colony, the higher the number of red balls the closer the typhoon was to land. Even up to today where typhoon warning is only broadcasted via radio, television and internet, Hong Kong people still refer to the warning signal as “Wind Ball”. For example, they would say: “No. 8 Wind Ball has been hoisted”. The first warning, worth paying any attention, always started with the “No.3 Wind Ball”. If a further ball was added, all Government Agencies and Schools would close, except essential services such as police, fire halls and hospitals. Most of the private enterprises would also close and send their employees home. The transport system would continue to operate to clear up the crowd of commuters but it could stop at any minute depending on the approach of the typhoon. Some unscrupulous taxi and mini van drivers would not miss this opportunity to make an extra buck by overcharging their customers.
The only blessing of a typhoon to Hong Kong was, I trust, first it assisted in cleaning the many filthy streets and back alleys of the city, and second it dumped enormous amount of rain water into the reservoirs which during the dry season leveled off to create a water shortage crisis. Fourteen inch of rain could drop in 24 hours. So often people had to put up with restricted water supply to a couple of hours a day for weeks, or when people had to line up with plastic and tin buckets to get their fill from Government water trucks. I was however spared the inconvenience, as I had the good fortune of being able to go to my brother-in-law’s factory in Kwun Tong to take a shower, factories then were exempt from water restriction.
Hong Kong water shortage
The illegal Chinese immigrants, and there were ten to twenty thousands on any count, who lived in shacks on the hillsides of Kowloon and Hong Kong, made of tin and tar paper, bore the brunt of the misfortune. If they were lucky their abode would be destroyed, blown away. If unlucky they might loose someone dear, a child, a brother, a mother. Then the following day after counting the dead, they would come back to rebuild the flimsy structure.
Hong Kong Squatters Dwellings, inhabited mainly by illegal immigrants from China
The second most affected people would be the “Tanka” people who lived on their boats all their lives. Though they would, on receiving news of incoming typhoon, moor their boats in the sanctuary of Typhoon Shelter shielded by breakwater which the Government had built around the shores of the Colony, it was never a full proof measure. Boats still sank, people still drowned, ocean liner still grounded.
The “Tanka” people who lived all their lives on boats in the waters of Hong Kong
The rest of the populace was pretty safe except when some people were unable to get home in time and were exposed in the wet gusty streets of Hong Kong with thousands of threatening neon signs dangling over their heads, ready to snap and fall with a split of a second.
There was always a group of optimistic people who welcomed the typhoon. As most if not all workplaces were closed, it became a public holiday for the employees, no work with pay. What a way to take a break. Mahjong was a national pastime and what better opportunity was there for the family, locked up within four walls, to sit round the table and engage in this exciting noisy game. All around town the clacking sound of the mahjong tiles would be competing with the howling sound of the wind and the furious splashing rain on the window panes. If all the clacking sounds could be concentrated in one spot, you might not know that a typhoon was running wild outside. Many restaurants were specialist caterers, supplying the food and the venue, to diehard mahjong enthusiasts who would excitedly have made earlier arrangements with their favourite friends for a mahjong marathon which could run for 24 hours.
Mahjong a national pastime of the Hong Kong people
After the storm the tranquility. City workers would be promptly but nonchalantly cleaning the streets of debris, leaves, branches and falling trees, planting pots, neon signage, roof metal sheets, card board and sometimes an old air-conditioning unit. All souls back to work, back to school, back to routine, as if nothing had happened. The only impact the men and women on the street would feel and mumble for a little while, was the new price of vegetable and fish at their local market. The price now was doubled due to the devastation of farm produce and the immobility of fishing vessels.
Vegetable market in Hong Kong