In the eye of the storm Typhoons in Hong Kong

Each year some of the world’s most dramatic storms form over the Pacific Ocean before churning across the sea and slamming into the coast of southern China. Measuring hundreds of kilometres in diameter, these meteorological giants can dump immense amounts of rain and pack winds of up to 260 kilometres an hour. Over decades Hong Kong has adapted to cope with typhoons, but the city still grinds to a halt when a monster roars in. Here we look at some of the most dramatic and deadly storms of the last 140 years, and consider what can be learned from the destruction and recovery.

Part 1: A tumultuous affair

‘Dead bodies in all directions washed ashore’

On September 21, 1874, in front of the grand three-storey buildings lining the Praya, sampans bobbed in Victoria Harbour, crewmen unloaded cargo ships onto the wharves, and some 50 miles away a P&O steamship carrying Mary Fraser on a voyage from Italy churned towards Hong Kong. For two days the 23-year-old wife of Eton-educated British diplomat Hugh Fraser had watched with mounting dread as angry clouds massed and the sea started to roil. ‘The sky had been inky black, the sea the same colour and oily, and running mountains high … while every object on board was covered with horrible black flies,’ Fraser wrote in her 1910 travelogue, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands. As the ship approached Hong Kong, their path slowed by the wreckage of boats smashed to pieces by some tremendous force just hours earlier, bodies bubbled to the surface.

A portrait of Mrs Hugh Fraser, from A Diplomatist’s Wife In Many Lands. First published by Dodd, Mead and company in 1910

Once they had docked the passengers began to disembark. Fraser stepped gingerly from the gangway to the safety of dry land, only to glance down and realise her heeled foot was inches away from a bloated corpse. She screamed. ‘It was the worst typhoon of the past fifty years,’ she had been told on board, “swooping down into that deep tea-kettle of a harbour. It had taken just two hours to rake Hong Kong to its foundations. The harbour was filled with debris, hundreds of bodies lined the shore and battered homes and businesses formed a sorry backdrop to scenes of despair. ‘It was all a pretty severe ordeal for a happy bride, and my nerves were so shaken that during the week we had to remain in Hong Kong I could not be left alone for a moment without feeling faint and sick,’ Fraser recalled. The storm had claimed an estimated 2,000 lives and would prove to be the first of many to make headlines over the coming decades, kill thousands more and cause untold damage. ‘It is our duty to record … one of the most appalling disasters that has ever happened in this Colony. A typhoon of unprecedented violence raged in this neighbourhood on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning last,’ reported the Hong Kong Daily Press, in its 1874 dispatch that appeared in newspapers around the world. It was one of the first reports to document in detail the effects of a typhoon pounding the territory.

Boats were dashed onto the rocks by the storm of 1874, as shown in the Illustrated London News. Courtesy of Shun Chi-ming/Hong Kong Observatory St Joseph’s R.C. Chapel is demolished by the typhoon of September 22, 1874. Photo courtesy of The National Archives UK Aberdeen Dock is left in ruins after the typhoon of September 1874. Photo courtesy of The National Archives UK

‘The wind increased frightfully in violence, raging and howling at first, and after a time sounding like one continued peal of musketry, broken at intervals by artillery, as sudden and more violent gusts swept through the harbour and over the land,’ it read. ‘At times, even above the fierce howling of the wind could be heard the pitiful cries of thousands, vainly battling with the storm. Dead bodies in all directions washed ashore… The flag staff at the Peak was seen leaning at an angle, a sad signal to ships miles away of the ravages to which the Colony had been subjected.’ In 1874 typhoons in this part of the world were nothing new, but a swelling population living in their path was. The number of people inhabiting Hong Kong Island stood at about 7,000 in 1841, with many living in small coastal villages. But by the census of 1865 this figure had increased to more than 125,000. It would be 32 years before a more devastating storm was reported, creeping up on Hong Kong seemingly from nowhere and stealing away 11,000 lives from Hong Kong’s by then 350,000-strong population.

‘It was wonderful, terrible, pathetic, yet grand’ 1906 typhoon: September 18 Early on the morning of September 18, 1906, the weather forecast for ‘moderate’ winds and showers gave no clue of the havoc that would arrive sooner than anyone could imagine. At 7.44am the Observatory raised a signal to say a typhoon was within 300 miles of the colony. Just sixteen minutes later the typhoon gun boomed to signal that hurricane force winds could be expected - and by 9am the storm was raging.

The South China Morning Post report on September 19, 1906, under the headline: ‘The Typhoon. Terrible loss of life. Steamers beached and sunk. Hundreds of sampans and junks lost. Immense destruction.’ SCMP

Debris lie on one of the piers on Connaught Road in Central following the passage of the 1906 typhoon. Hong Kong Maritime Museum Men and the devastation left by the storm. Hong Kong Maritime Museum The river streamer San Cheung that broke free, ran into another wharf and sank. Hong Kong Maritime Museum Several boats including the Taikoo Fook are casualties of the storm. Hong Kong Maritime Museum

‘Variable winds, moderate, with probably some thunder showers, was the weather forecast for the twenty-fours hours ended noon yesterday,’ the South China Morning Post recorded the following day. ‘How far wide of the mark the officials of the Observatory were was amply demonstrated ere the twenty-four hours had ended,’ the Post stated. ‘The noise made by the elements as they swept in blinding fury from west to east resembled as near as possible the deafening noise of a midnight express speeding through a tunnel. It was wonderful, terrible, pathetic, yet grand – this spectacle of elemental nature amok; indifferent to life and property.’ So sudden was the storm’s grip on Hong Kong that an estimated 10,000 unprepared people perished, with around 1,000 junks destroyed. One notable among the victims was the Cambridge educated Anglican Bishop of Victoria, Joseph Hoare, who had been sailing with pupils near Castlepeak Bay when their vessel ‘received the full force of the typhoon’. Shortly afterwards their boat ‘overturned and was dashed to pieces on the rocks. The news cast quite a gloom over the European Community’, the Post reported.

Bishop Joseph Hoare (left), killed during the typhoon of 1906, and Dr William Doberck, first Director of Hong Kong Observatory. Courtesy of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and Hong Kong Observatory

An SCMP ‘representative’ accompanying the harbour master on his assessment of the damage the following morning, wrote: ‘The loss of life can be nothing short of terrible and the amount of destitution enormous. The poor homeless sampan people waded up to their middles in the water in the hope of rescuing what few goods they had possessed… The whole scene reminded one of a mammoth gypsy encampment.’ Later reports spoke of scores of people plucked from the water miles from shore, clinging for hours to the wreckage of destroyed boats, while one heroic tale told of an unusual rescue. ‘When the typhoon was at its height a Chinese was blown down Pedder Street toward the wharf, and unable to stop went headlong into the harbour… A European rushed across the windswept space and boldly jumped in to the rescue. He succeeded in securing the drowning man with the aid of an Indian constable who unrolled his turban and threw the end to the rescuer.’ The last scalp the typhoon claimed was that of the first Director of Hong Kong Observatory, Dutchman Dr William Doberck, who was widely known to ignore forecasts sent from the Jesuits who ran Manila and Shanghai’s observatories, and antagonised colleagues and the Colony’s governors alike. While it is uncertain whether Doberck was ever warned of the approach of the 1906 typhoon, blame was apportioned and a concerted campaign by the Post, among others, eventually forced him into retirement. Only then were bridges built with neighbouring observatories to help ensure such a devastating weather event would never again take Hong Kong by surprise.

‘It is doubtful if a storm of greater severity has ever visited the Colony’ The Great Typhoon of Hong Kong: September 2, 1937 Almost three decades later surprise was taken out of the equation when forecasters gave 24 hours notice of an impending typhoon. And yet the population was decimated again, this time largely due to a huge tidal wave that swept inland, washing away homes, families and everything in its path. The Great Typhoon of 1937, billed by the Post as the worst to ever hit Hong Kong, was so fierce that meteorological instruments could not cope with the winds and small fish were blown right out of the foaming, churning harbour, later to be found on the roofs of buildings over 30 metres high.

Typhoon's Toll: A poster detailing the losses suffered in 1937's Great Typhoon of Hong Kong. Courtesy of family of J.S. Snook

In his report on the event, Observatory Director C. W. Jeffries described how ‘squalls of a phenomenal intensity’ had pushed the needle of the anemograph used to measure wind speed to its maximum capacity of 125mph (200km/h). It was later estimated that winds had peaked at over 260km/h. ‘It is doubtful if a storm of greater severity and destructive power has ever visited the Colony,’ he wrote. Throughout the following week page after page of print described in minute detail the death and destruction wrought on the night of the typhoon - how fire had torn through buildings, flames fanned by the wind; how homes and businesses had lost roofs or collapsed, and how ships had been dashed on the rocks. ‘At the height of the storm a tenement block of nine four-storeyed houses in the Western District went afire and 15 inmates perished… Several buildings were unroofed, old houses collapsed, garden walls were blown down, roads blocked by landslides, fallen telegraph poles and uprooted trees. Among the many ships in the harbour were some laid up because of the war, or under repair at docks and without steam. A score of these broke loose from their doubled moorings and careered drunkenly about the harbour in a macabre dance. The Star Ferry pier suffered extensive damage.’ Two days after the typhoon it became apparent that the worst affected area had been Tai Po, struck without warning by a tidal wave just after 3am ‘which carried all before it for a quarter of a mile inland’. Entire villages were wiped out, many inhabitants washed out of their beds and to their deaths. One survivor described how the wave ‘flung itself onto Tai Po Old Market, causing about 90 deaths there so far… The water at this place was 20 feet higher than I have ever known. Among those killed were many women and children.’ The wave had been caused by a combination of meteorological features typical of typhoons but devastating due to its proximity to low-lying Hong Kong. Extreme wind speeds of up to 269km/h and plummeting air pressure at the eye of the storm conspired to suck water from the high pressure area outside, dragging it toward the shore as one tremendous wave that squeezed into the Tolo Channel to engulf all in its path.

Page 12: Tai Po tidal wave toll Page 13: Salvage work Pages from the South China Morning Post two days after the passage of the Great Typhoon of 1937.

‘Buildings collapsed, people were buried alive’ Wanda: September 1, 1962 Despite the huge death toll - about 11,000 perished, with some estimates putting the figure as high as 15,000 - Hong Kong was to witness an even more powerful storm a quarter of a century later. On August 27, 1962, far out in the Pacific, 2,000 kilometres east-southeast of Hong Kong, Wanda was born, forming as a tropical depression and setting off on a path that would shake the city to its core. Five days later, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the 1937 storm, Wanda hit the city with an intensity not seen before or since. Winds gusting at over 260km/h coincided with a high tide, causing a massive storm surge. Rain hammered down, pouring 1,500 million gallons of water into Hong Kong’s reservoirs in just 48 hours. Cars were flipped over by the relentless wind. ‘Typhoon Wanda, with winds of up to 162 miles an hour, smashed its way through Hongkong yesterday and in eight hours of terror, killed or injured hundreds, rendered nearly 20,000 homeless and left behind it a trial (sic) of destruction,’ reported the Post under the headline ‘Hong Kong’s Day of Terror’.

Hong Kong’s Day of Terror: Front page of the South China Morning Post on September 2, 1962. SCMP

Surviving sampans surrounded by the wreckage of vessels smashed to pieces by Typhoon Wanda. SCMP Typhoon Wanda brings floods to the streets of Hong Kong. SCMP A boat is hauled back to sea after becoming grounded outside the Sha Tin Theatre. Courtesy of Information Services Department A family looks out at floods brought by Typhoon Wanda. SCMP A car lies upside-down in Wan Chai after being flipped over by Wanda’s powerful gusts. Courtesy of Information Services Department Sha Tin lies in ruins after a storm surge caused by Wanda. SCMP

‘Not a single area escaped damage of some kind. Shataukok was ravaged by a tidal wave; so was Sha Tin where half the population were forced to take to the hills to escape drowning. Buildings collapsed, people were buried alive, there was extensive flooding everywhere, and there were fires – all at the height of the storm.’ At 10am Tai Po again found itself under more than two metres of water, as another tidal wave surged inland ‘carrying with it everything in its path. Only after it had devastated every district taking huge toll on lives and property did it ease its grip on the city’. When the winds finally abated and waters retreated 434 people were reported to have died and 72,000 had been left homeless.

‘I was swimming for hours before reaching the shore’ Rose: August 16, 1971 Eleven years later, for six days from August 10, Typhoon Rose wiggled her way towards Hong Kong, decreasing in strength slightly as she passed over the main Philippine island of Luzon, but soon intensifying again, making landfall on Lantau and wreaking havoc. Although not quite as powerful as Wanda, and smaller in diameter, 1971’s Typhoon Rose still packed winds up to 165km/h and claimed the dubious record of being responsible for the worst maritime disaster Hong Kong has witnessed to this day. The 2,600-tonne Fatshan passenger ferry had anchored at Ma Wan Island to shelter from the storm. But the ship, carrying 92 crewmen and waiters, was blown towards Lantau, her useless anchor dragging along behind her. One survivor told how, on approaching Lantau, the helpless Fatshan was driven into two other vessels before finally succumbing to the storm and rolling onto her side. Tam Yau-sing was hurled into the broiling sea and forced to swim for his life.

The Fatshan lies almost submerged off the coast of Lantau after being sunk during Typhoon Rose, killing 88 people onboard. SCMP A dog stands on wreckage as students from St Joseph’s Anglo-Chinese School help typhoon victims in Sam Ka Tsuen. Chu Ming-hoi/SCMP Fragile houses are left in ruins after Typhoon Rose ravaged Sam Ka Tsuen. Chu Ming-hoi/SCMP A pile of twisted metal crashes down onto a parked car. Chan Kiu/SCMP A squatter area is wrecked by Rose. Chan Kiu/SCMP Wing Lok Wharf is left severely damaged by Typhoon Rose. Chan Kiu/SCMP A building on D’Aguilar Street is inspected by firefighters after collapsing. SCMP

‘Nearly all the crew members were in the cabins at that time. I think they had little chance of survival. I was lucky that I was on the stern of the ship,’ he later recalled. ‘It seemed that I was swimming for hours before reaching the shore. The sea was so stormy that I felt dizzy and fainted. I don’t know for how long.” In all, 88 crew members died, while another 22 Hongkongers were killed elsewhere in the territory, including a 22-year-old woman and her two-year-old son, electrocuted by a falling cable outside their home in Pokfulam, and a woman and two boys discovered washed up on Lamma Island’s Lo So Shing beach. Some 300 small boats were lost, and 30 ocean-going vessels were grounded or damaged through collision, while 5,600 people were made homeless.

‘City at a standstill’ Hope: August 2, 1979 Eight years later Typhoon Hope arrived in Hong Kong following a near-identical path to that of Wanda. ‘Hope Hammers Hongkong’ the Post proclaimed on August 3, the day after the storm brought the city ‘to a complete standstill with all public transport – air, sea and land – suspended at the height of the typhoon’. Despite the standstill, Hope marked the first time transport connections between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon remained operational, thanks to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, opened in 1972. Hope wasn’t without drama - the streets were strewn with debris and 2,100 lorryloads of fallen trees had to be taken away - but the human cost was far lower than that of earlier direct hits. A dozen people were killed, with mudslides, downed power cables and collapsed homes all claiming victims. The most dramatic visual loss was that of Kowloon’s two Star Ferry piers in Tsim Sha Tsui, smashed to pieces by the helpless 100-tonne Greek freighter Argonaut. Chief Officer Anthony Antzoulatos later recounted how it had broke anchor and the crew had tried in vain to keep the vessel away from the shore. The ship eventually came to rest crushed against Kowloon Public Pier, with gashes along her port side, a washed up symbol of the fury that could be inflicted upon the territory.

The Star Ferry Pier at Tsim Sha Tsui, in ruins after being battered by the Greek freighter Argonaut during Typhoon Hope. SCMP A rescuer carries a young survivor past the debris left behind by Typhoon Hope. SCMP

‘Never had such severe damage been done’ Ellen, Sam and York The end of the 1970s mercifully marked the end of the high death tolls inflicted on Hong Kong by typhoons. The next two big names to arrive - Ellen in 1983 and York in 1999 - struck an increasingly vertical, concrete city which provided a stronger, more resilient infrastructure, able to more effectively shelter its residents from the elements. Ellen and York saw T10 signals raised for eight and 11 hours respectively, with York setting the record for the longest ever Signal 10 raised. Ellen spawned only the second ever tornado recorded in Hong Kong, which flattened several wooden huts in the San Tin area of the New Territories, and caused flooding that decimated farmland, drowning 10,000 chickens and 2,300 pigs. The Zoological and Botanical Gardens were ravaged, with three-quarters of their plants uprooted, including centuries old trees. ‘Never had such severe damage been done to the gardens,’ the Post reported, recounting how a New Guinea Desmarest fig parrot died – either of fright or ‘being dashed into the side of its cage’. Two hardy Brazilian marmosets, however, were born during the storm.

Hurricane force winds and torrential rain brought by Typhoon Ellen bend trees at Hong Kong Country Club. C. Y. Yu/SCMP Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens are left a tangled mess of trees and shrubs after Ellen sweeps in. P Y Tang/SCMP The freight carrier ‘City of Lobito’ rests on Cheung Chau’s Tung Wan beach after being blown ashore. SCMP Wrecked speedboats lay piled up after being tossed onto the rocks by crashing waves. Yau Tin-kwai/SCMP Waves pound Kennedy Town’s waterfront as Ellen approaches. Chan Kiu/SCMP

In terms of the evolving cityscape, Ellen saw a new phenomenon. With an increasingly high-rise environment, one scaffolding company alone reported 500,000sqft of bamboo poles torn from buildings and hurled into the streets below - pleasing the company’s owner who boasted business would be ‘boosted by about 20 per cent’ thanks to Ellen. The march of modernity saw fresh problems arise when York roared in. Gusts of up to 234km/h whipped around skyscrapers that hadn’t existed in Ellen’s day, posing a hazard for those inside and anyone foolhardy enough to be standing below. The gleaming new glass and concrete towers of Wan Chai were hit with a force that saw hundreds of windows implode, while a crane on a building in nearby Jaffe Road came crashing down from 30 storeys up. Across the city the emergency services received around 460 calls for help, mainly to rescue people trapped in lifts by power outages. While just seven flights were cancelled during Ellen, the increased air traffic of the late 1990s saw some 470 flights cancelled or delayed, affecting about 80,000 passengers.

China Airlines Flight 642 crashes Play video | 0:45

Video editing by SCMP. Cover photo: Handout picture via Apple Daily

It was the second time that year that air traffic had faced major storm disruption, after Typhoon Sam months earlier contributed to the dramatic flipping over of a China Airlines passenger jet from Bangkok as it landed at Chek Lap Kok airport. Witnesses told investigators how the McDonnell Douglas MD-11’s right wing clipped the runway and was torn from the fuselage as it landed amid strong crosswinds. Passengers were left hanging upside-down in their seats in a smoke-filled cabin for hours while rescuers battled to save them, praying the aircraft would not erupt in flames. Three of the 315 passengers and crew were killed. Since then Hong Kong has emerged relatively unscathed from the storms that have passed over the territory. Although the T10 signal was raised for Typhoon Vicente in 2012 - the first time the hurricane-force warning had been issued since York - damage was relatively superficial, with downed trees and passengers forced to sleep on the MTR making the headlines.

The boom of a crane lies across a Wan Chai street after Typhoon York blew it from its perch 30 floors up. Martin Chan/SCMP Signs lie in the middle of South Wall Road after being blown down by York. David Wong/SCMP Dozens of windows on Revenue Tower are boarded up after being blown in by York. David Wong/SCMP Workers assess the damage caused by Typhoon York hundreds of feet up. David Wong/SCMP

So is modern-day Hong Kong a safe place to be in a typhoon? The flimsy huts of yesteryear have largely been replaced by brick and concrete structures and the city’s sea-dwelling population has moved onto land. Flood defences have been beefed up and advanced weather warning systems give ocean-going vessels plenty of time to take shelter. But many parts of the city still remain relatively low-lying and prone to flooding. What damage a storm with the extreme force of Wanda, coupled with a severe tidal surge, could do the modern-day city is anyone’s guess. The truth is, Hong Kong is yet to be tested. And despite our best efforts at protection, we cannot be sure how prepared the city is until the next great wind tears across the South China Sea and unleashes its fury upon us.