Much of Hong Kong left high and dry after record rainfall and flooding this past Friday!

  

A flooded area I saw last Saturday -- in the aftermath of

 Super Typhoon Saola's visit -- as opposed to today!

 

After I finished writing my review of Everyphone Everywhere (Hong Kong, 2023) on Thursday night, I checked the Hong Kong Observatory's website and found that a Black Rainstorm Warning had been issued earlier that night.  Although it's the highest level of rainstorm warning (with amber and red being the other colors of lower levels in Hong Kong's system), I didn't think too much about it as that was by no means the first time I've seen it issued.

 

Also, I remember having gone to attend a Hong Kong International Film Festival screening some years back when the Black Rainstorm Warning signal was on. (For the record: film screenings tend to take place as scheduled during a T8 or what's colloquilly known as "Black Rain" in cinemas and such; though people can exchange unused tickets within seven days for others.  And yes, I've also gone to view films during a T8!)

 

As it so happened though, the rainstorm was so major and loud that it led to my sleep being fitful and my waking up a few times in the night.  Still, I did not expect to see that the Black Rainstorm Warning would still be in effect when I checked the Hong Kong Observatory website again on Friday morning.  Nor did I expect to see the dramatic photos and videos of flooding in various parts of Hong Kong (including Wan Chai and Chai Wan -- which, for all of their name similarity, are not located close to each other! -- and Wong Tai Sin) that the social media was full of!  Oh, and landslides and road subsidence too!

 

In the end, the Black Rainstorm Warning was in effect for an unprecedented16 hours and 35 minutes.  But by the time I headed out of my building to see what my neighborhood looked like (at around lunchtime yesterday), whatever flood waters there had been -- which an acquaintance told me had been ankle deep late on Thursday night -- had subsided, only leaving a bit of debris over on the main road, part of which is close to a hilly area, but really not much at all elsewhere.  Also, at least half of the shops and restaurants had opened for business -- with a number of the eateries that had been closed at lunch time having reopened for dinner service when I went out again in the evening.

 

Still, I feel for the small/local businesses who must have lost quite a bit of business and money on two consecutive Fridays; with it being a T10 two Fridays ago, and then black rain yesterday.  And then there in other parts of Hong Kong that did get flooded; with among the worst hit being those at the Temple Mall North over at Wong Tai Sin, whose basement level was almost entirely underwater at the height of the flooding!

 

Yesterday's floods made the international news.  I guess it should be no surprise since it produced dramatic visuals and the rainfall that caused it is the heaviest Hong Kong has had since records were first compiled (in 1884).  I wonder though if the pretty amazingly rapid cleanup that has been undertaken (and that has made it so that, say, the Wong Tai Sin MTR station is back in operation today) will be as widely reported.  Otherwise, it might get people outside Hong Kong thinking that the city is in the same boat as the sections of Greece that (also) has experienced major flooding in recent days -- and sounds like it might never be the same again as a result.  

Of course, this is not to belittle what Mother Nature unleashed on Hong Kong as many of us were asleep on Friday.  In addition to what must be hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, at least two lives were lost as a result and some 15,000 people over at Yiu Tung Estate are currently without water.  For comparison: There were no fatalities due to  Super Typhoon Saola.  Hell, even Typhoon Manghkut back in 2018 left ZERO people dead in Hong Kong. 

 

So yeah, these are not good times for Hong Kong indeed.  And it really doesn't help that its political leadership is so... lacking at best (and uncaring at worst).  As Oscar Liu commented on Twitter: "Facing public anger over Hong Kong’s unpreparedness for the sheer impact of the record-breaking downpours leaving citywide devastations, the city’s leader [finally] showed up 19 hours later [at a disaster site] and left without taking English questions."  And as another Hong Kong resident observed: "It's times like this that I'm reminded that John Lee is not really a leader. He's a provincial sheriff appointed by the emperor to keep order and mind the store."