HATO LEAVES 16 DEAD
Scores injured as storm lashes Macau, Hong Kong and southern China
MACAU
YINGLUCK SHINAWATRA, Former Thai prime minister on the website of Apple Daily showed water gushing into an underground carpark, with people wading through neck-deep water littered with debris. It was not clear if it was the same carpark where the bodies had been found.
“I have never seen Macau like this since I came here in the 1970s,” said a taxi driver in his 50s, who gave his name as Lao.
He said he thought authorities had reacted too slowly and did not do enough to alert residents of the coming storm.
“It’s like they were trying to gamble with their luck... because Macau had been lucky before,” he added, saying there was not enough time for residents to prepare or buy groceries.
The enclave’s sprawling Venetian casino resort had been on backup power on Wednesday and without air conditioning or proper lighting, said a source.
Residents holding plastic buckets were seen queueing for water from fire hydrants.
Ferry services between Macau and Hong Kong resumed yesterday morning, but passengers said they experienced delays.
In Hong Kong, Hato — whose name is Japanese for “pigeon” — sparked the most severe Typhoon 10 warning, only the third time a storm of this power has pounded the financial hub in the past 20 years.
The city could have suffered losses of HK$8 billion (RM4.37 billion), Chinese University of Hong Kong economics professor Terence Chong said.
More than 120 were injured as the city was lashed with hurricane winds and pounding rain. However, one 83-year-old man earlier thought to be a victim of the weather had committed suicide during the typhoon.
In the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, at least eight people have died, state broadcaster CCTV reported, while 27,000 were evacuated to temporary shelters, the official Xinhua news agency said.
In Zhuhai, which borders Macau, 275 homes had collapsed, according to state-run Beijing News. AFP