HONG KONG – Hong Kongers’ preparedness paid off in the face of one of the most powerful typhoons in the city’s history.
Bringing torrents of pelting rain, roaring wind and crashing waves, Super Typhoon Ragasa came – and went – leaving considerably less damage in its trail than a similarly severe storm in 2018.
That year, Super Typhoon Mangkhut left 458 people injured, one of the city’s worst casualty counts since records began in 1960. For Ragasa, hospitals had treated 101 injured people, as at 8pm on Sept 24.
Ragasa reached wind speeds of 195kmh when it was at its closest to Hong Kong, higher than Mangkhut’s 175kmh.
Observers credited the limited damage in the aftermath of the latest typhoon to the authorities’ better preparation this time around, coordinated measures taken earlier by institutions and businesses, as well as residents’ cooperation with the warnings issued.
“Ragasa’s intensity was about the same as that of Mangkhut, but the difference is that people were much more prepared for the typhoon this time,” Professor Johnny Chan of the Asia-Pacific Typhoon Collaborative Research Centre told The Straits Times.
“This time, the government did a really good job, warning people very early on so that they could plan ahead. The people have also learnt from their lesson in 2018.”
Warnings for people to prepare for Ragasa were issued by the Hong Kong Observatory as early as a week ago and were taken seriously.
Mangkhut shattered glass windows in hundreds of homes and shops, damaged some 700 vehicles, roads and buildings, cut the power supply for more than 40,000 households, and felled a record 60,000 trees.
For Ragasa, the authorities said they had received about 1,200 reports of felled trees, four of landslides and 22 of flooding, as at 8pm on Sept 24.
A No. 3 typhoon warning remains in place for Hong Kong until at least 7am on Sept 25.
The typhoon made landfall in neighbouring Guangdong province in mainland China at around 5pm on Sept 24, weakening as it moved westwards to Guangxi. It killed at least 20 people when it blew past Taiwan and the Philippines.
“During Mangkhut, Hong Kongers were complacent and failed to take the authorities’ warnings seriously,” said Prof Chan, an academic at the City University of Hong Kong.
A person looks on at a flooded cycling path in Tseung Kwan O after Super Typhoon Ragasa hit Hong Kong on Sept 24.
PHOTO: AFP
“But for Ragasa, the Hong Kong Observatory amplified its warnings to evoke people’s memories of Mangkhut and warned that Ragasa would be very similar.”
Preparations started days before Ragasa hit Hong Kong early in the morning of Sept 24.
Already on Sept 22, it was evident from the swell of the evening peak-hour traffic that most Hong Kong employees – notorious for working long hours – had knocked off on time that day to ready themselves, their families and homes for the approaching storm.
A sense of purpose was thick in the air as people strode briskly into supermarkets across the city, emptying the shelves of bread, meat and vegetables, and forming long snaking queues at the counters to pay.
Social media posts showed rolls of masking tape – a traditional typhoon-essential for reinforcing glass panels – being sold alongside baskets of fresh produce at one wet market, and jostling shoppers not unlike the Chinese New Year marketing crowd at another.
Business owners were already taping up their glass displays, tying down exposed furniture and installations that could not be brought indoors, and piling heavy sandbags around the more flood-prone areas within their premises.
The authorities sent teams across the city to clear drains of debris, secure landslip-prone slopes, put down floodgates and build walls of sandbags in low-lying areas.
A sense of purpose was thick in the air as people strode briskly into supermarkets across the city, emptying the shelves of bread, meat and vegetables, and forming long snaking queues at the counters to pay.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF POH CHEE MENG
Schools were shut on Sept 23 and 24, and most offices stopped work early on Sept 23 to let their employees get home hours before the storm arrived.
Public hospitals’ non-emergency services were suspended from the afternoon of Sept 23, and public transport services were limited.
At the airport, all flights were cancelled for 36 hours, to resume only from 6am on Sept 25. And 80 per cent of local airlines’ planes were evacuated from the city. Some 140,000 passengers and more than 1,000 flights were affected.
Prof Chan said officials were keen to avoid a repeat of the chaos from Super Typhoon Saola in 2023, when hundreds of people who had just arrived in Hong Kong were stranded at the airport after the Airport Express rail line shut down during the storm.
He noted, too, that the authorities had done much work in the years since Mangkhut in 2018, to increase the capacity of the city’s drainage systems as well as to remove weak trees susceptible to falling.
“This is why the number of trees felled this time is significantly fewer than those felled in Mangkhut,” he said.
“It would be even better if the government’s emergency response teams can remove the fallen trees faster this time as well, rather than to leave them blocking major roads for days as they did in 2018.”
Singaporean Poh Chee Meng after the worst of the typhoon passed in Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront Sept 24.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF POH CHEE MENG
Economists Terence Chong and Simon Lee said they estimated less financial disruption to the Hong Kong economy from Ragasa, compared with Mangkhut.
“Now, more people can work from home and Hong Kong’s stock market can even remain open during the typhoon,” Prof Chong, executive director of the Lau Chor Tak Institute of Global Economics and Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told ST.
“Given these technological advances in recent years, the economic losses wrought by the typhoon on Hong Kong as an international financial centre should be lower than before.”
Emergency workers rest beside a robotic “water-pumping dragon” after using it to clear nearly 1m of floodwater at Lei Yue Mun, a blackspot for flooding during Typhoon Ragasa in Hong Kong on Sept 24.
PHOTO: EPA
The Hong Kong stock exchange has, since September 2024, been allowed to continue operating even under extreme weather conditions.
Prof Chong noted that the daily value of the city’s stock market transactions far outstrips restaurants’ daily earnings, and hence the typhoon-induced closure of shops would not make as big a dent on the economy as if the stock exchange were shut.
The cost of physical damage from the storm may also be lower as many vehicle owners took the trouble to park their cars in more secure indoor carparks this time, he added.
Mr Lee, an adjunct faculty member at the Shenzhen Finance Institute under CUHK-Shenzhen, said he estimated the economic impact from Ragasa to be around HK$2 billion (S$331 million) to HK$3 billion, less than the HK$4.6 billion bill incurred from Mangkhut in 2018.
While some residents complained that the city’s semi-shutdown hurt businesses already grappling with slower consumption, Mr Lee told ST that “it was right for the authorities to have prepared for the worst for this typhoon”.
“The city wasn’t actually totally shut, as some shops and malls within housing estates remained open, as was the stock market.
“The central government (in Beijing) does closely monitor how local officials handle natural disasters and emergencies. Poor handling means poor management, while good handling leads to good impressions,” he added.
For Singaporean tourist Poh Chee Meng, Ragasa was an eye-opening experience that demonstrated the well-oiled efficiency of the city’s authorities and residents in preparing for a typhoon.
People walk past toppled trees in Tseung Kwan O after Super Typhoon Ragasa hit Hong Kong on Sept 24.
PHOTO: AFP
“I was impressed with the city’s leader (Chief Executive John Lee) when I saw him on TV clearly drilling in his message on the importance of preparedness ahead of the typhoon,” said Mr Poh, in his 50s, who works in the e-commerce industry.
“And when I went out for a stroll, I was impressed with the work the people were doing to tie down the statues at the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui and clearing their shopfronts… The streets were very calm and deserted as the residents also heeded the authorities’ advice to stay home.”
The typhoon research centre’s Prof Chan said the advance notice given and preparations made by the authorities and residents this time struck a good balance between ensuring the safety of the people while not too severely affecting the economy.
“It looks like we have learnt our lesson after Mangkhut and Saola,” he said.
