Macau leader apologizes over Hato alert
Print Edition
THE death toll from Typhoon Hato rose to at least 17 yesterday after the storm left a trail of destruction across south China, having earlier blacked out Macau’s mega-casinos and battered Hong Kong’s skyscrapers.
Eight people died in the gambling hub of Macau, where images showed cars underwater and people swimming along streets. The city’s famed mega-casinos were running on backup generators.
Macau’s leader made a public apology after his government came under fire for its delayed storm warning, while the head of the weather bureau resigned.
A man was killed by a wall that was blown down, another fell from a fourth-floor terrace and one was hit by a truck.
The Macau government said that two bodies were found in a flooded car park early yesterday and that two more died when they were trapped in the basement of their shop. Details of the remaining death were not immediately available.
Blacked-out slot machines were seen at the largely empty Wynn Macau casino where there was no air conditioning and a musty atmosphere.
However, a few dozen gamblers ignored the heat to try their luck at four baccarat tables.
A staff member at the sprawling Venetian resort said its casino and shops were open, but there was no air conditioning.
At the Grand Lisboa Hotel in central Macau, an employee said that it was still without electricity and water yesterday and that its casino and restaurants were closed.
The city’s gambling industry generated over 220 billion patacas (US$27.29 billion) in revenue last year, over half its annual GDP, as it hosted more than 30 million visitors.
Macau’s leader Fernando Chui and other government ministers bowed their heads during a minute’s silence at a press conference last night.
“These two days, we have faced an extremely difficult test together. Hato is the strongest typhoon in 53 years and has brought tremendous damage to Macau,” Chui said.
“In facing this disaster, we admit we have not done enough, there is space for improvement. Here I represent the Macau government in expressing our apologies to the residents,” he said, adding that the city’s weather bureau chief had resigned.
Debris lay scattered on roads and a shipping container was washed up in front of a temple after Wednesday’s storm.
Streets were lined with trash and shattered glass, and residents holding plastic buckets queued for water from fire hydrants.
“We’ve been going without water and electricity for more than 24 hours. It’s so hot,” May Lee told reporters, adding that there was not even water for flushing the toilet.
In Hong Kong, Hato 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.
More than 120 people were injured as the city was lashed with hurricane winds and pounding rain.
In the neighboring southern province of Guangdong, at least eight people died, China Central Television reported, while around 27,000 were evacuated to temporary shelters. Nearly 2 million households were briefly without power.
CCTV said four of the deaths were in Zhuhai, three in Zhongshan and one in Jiangmen.
Train services between Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and the city of Shenzhen had resumed at 4pm on Wednesday, and more trains linking Guangzhou and other cities in Guangdong were operating yesterday, according to Guangzhou Railway Group.
Ferry services resumed on Wednesday night on the Qiongzhou Strait, a major gateway to the island province of Hainan.
More than 2.7 million Guangdong households had their electricity supplies disrupted, but three quarters now have power back, according to China Southern Power Grid.
Three coastal nuclear power stations were unaffected.
Hato was forecast to move west at speeds of up to 30 kilometers per hour and weaken into a tropical depression by yesterday afternoon, according to the National Meteorological Center.
It also brought downpours in several parts of southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Wednesday. As a result of the typhoon, floods in Yunnan left one person dead and two injured, local authorities said.
The provincial weather bureau forecast said rainstorms would continue to batter western, central and southern parts of the province today.
In neighboring Sichuan Province, forecasters predicted rainstorms in southern areas today.
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