The day a typhoon destroyed our Hong Kong village ... and the aftermath

But we all know that this is no ordinary night. Talk is full of weather. People are tense, unsure of what is to come. A mural featuring a Chinese dragon battling with the sea - an auspicious sign of power and strength in Chinese mythology, particularly in relation to water, storms and floods – looms large on the gable wall behind us. This ominous seascape was painted some years earlier by my father-in-law, Steve Megson, as a gift to the Shek O community, a metaphorical promise of protection in turbulent times. With the onslaught of Typhoon Mangkhut due in the morning, its might is about to be tested.

Shek O (石澳), meaning ‘Rocky Bay’, is a far cry from what most people think of when they think of Hong Kong. Only 30 minutes by car from the city centre, there are no dense high-rises, flash shopping malls or glistening skylines here. A small, mostly undeveloped former fishing village on a peninsula stretching out to the South China Sea, Shek O comprises of around 400 low-rise houses, some basic and sub-standard, others sprawling and worth tens of millions of pounds; one grocery store, a smattering of restaurants and food stalls, no ATM, a bar, two beaches and a lot of corrugated iron. There is one windy and tree-lined road in and out. On one side, the well-trod Dragon’s Back mountain broods o’erhead; on all others, the sea.

Click here to watch incredible drone footage of the typhoon, via the South China Morning Post

But what Shek O lacks in facilities, it certainly makes up for in community spirit. The population is a mötley crüe of close-knit local families who have been here for generations, living cheek by jowl with a smattering of migrants from most-likely every continent in the world. Multitude languages are heard in the playground, with children able to play safely and freely outside from dawn to dusk. Shoes don’t feature much, nor do clothes other than beachwear. Add to that mix a few of Hong Kong’s richest families looking down from the hills above the village, and you have a colourful diaspora of cultures and classes living in relative harmony, knitted together by the common desire to be out of the city and nearby the sea.

Shek O and Hong Kong are no strangers to typhoons (or tropical cyclones as they are also known). Typhoon season typically runs from May-November, peaking during the summer months. The Hong Kong Observatory, the government’s weather agency, has a rigorous and reliable series of warning signals that rate the typhoons from T1-10, thus giving people plenty of notice to pack up shop and take necessary precautions. Mangkhut, named after the Thai word for mangosteen (an Asian tropical fruit), was touted as a T10, a typhoon of super standards, tipped to be the strongest worldwide this year and Hong Kong’s most potent on record.

That said, we had heard all this before. Predicting the course of a typhoon is no exact science, and storms were known to change course even up to the very last minute. This time two years ago, Super Typhoon Meranti was set to hit Hong Kong; everyone prepared for the destruction it promised. It turned out to be a non-event. The memory of last year’s Typhoon Hato, however, which had wreaked havoc in Hong Kong and its sister territory Macau where 10 people died, was still strong. This year Macau was taking no chances, suspending its casino operations from 11pm on the Saturday night, the first time in history. The Hong Kong Jockey Club cancelled Sunday’s race at Sha Tin for the first time in five years, a gesture that would cost them an estimated HK$1.2 billion (around 117 million pounds) in betting turnover. These actions alone, more so than the Observatory’s warnings, were telling us that Mangkhut meant business.

Although the T1 warning was hoisted on Friday night when the storm was over 1000 km from the city - the furthest out a storm has ever been from Hong Kong when the signal went up - as we look out to sea from the safety of our bar stools, it appears pretty much like the proverbial calm before the storm. We, like so many of our neighbours, spent the earlier part of the evening hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Various types of tape were put to use: masking tape in shapes of crosses to prevent glass splintering from shattered frames; gaffer tape to plug the gaps around cheaply installed windows. Sandbags were filled; towels corralled; water and wine stocked; cars, boats, canoes, surf boards and stand up paddleboards (SUPs) moved to village nooks and crannies deemed to be relatively safe. We even moved our children.

Our small 700ft apartment is one storey up and set back around ten metres from the seafront at the back beach, the smaller of Shek O’s two beaches. Unlike many of our neighbours, particularly those on the front beach, our building is quite robust, made of concrete and protected by a sea wall. But not knowing quite what to expect, we made the decision the day before to send our two children, Calla 7 years and Maia 19 months old, to stay with their grandparents on outlying Lamma island. We were comforted by the fact that, although still surrounded by water, they would be higher up and further away from the coast than if they stayed at home in Shek O, but quietly anxious at the thought that we would be apart, should anything happen to either of us.

Joe and Aiden’s daughter, Calla, playing beside her grandfather’s mural Photograph: Jody Megson

At around 11pm, Ben Lau, the bar owner, calls last orders and tells us to treat this final drink as the BBB’s ‘farewell party’. Ben knows these waters better than many. He and his family have fished them for years. The bar, to his mind, would be gone by the next day. We take this as the sternest and most reliable of warnings. We finish our drinks, batten down the hatches and go to bed.

When we wake in the morning, Mangkhut has reached the intensity of a typhoon 8. The Philippines has been pummeled overnight. We check in with our daughters’ carer, who is from the Pangasinan province in the northern island of Luzon, the worst hit. Her family are safe, thank goodness, but their entire rice crop has been destroyed just before harvest, their livelihoods gone.

Our windows that look straight out to sea are already struggling to survive in the severe winds. The rain is driving and the tidal spray battering our balcony doors. Water seeps through windows and walls and any orifice that will let it in. We stem its flow and protect our valuables with towels and tarp.

By 940am, the Observatory has declared a T10. It is hard not to be gripped to the buckling glass, peeping through portholes in tape and sea foam to watch what seems like a disaster movie unfolding right before our eyes. Nothing appears quite real. The noise is incredible, the storm sounding like an aching, baying sea monster coming furiously to life. As the wind and rain intensify, my husband calls me back, worried the windows are going to blow.

By 11am, the wind feels at its most ferocious, reaching, we now know, over 195 km per hour (121 mph). The waves are relentless, easily conquering the 5-metre sea wall and hurling themselves at our balcony, lambasting our windows with full force. We can no longer look out. We hunker down and occupy our attention with news of destruction from every corner of Shek O relayed almost live on our community WhatsApp group. Through our tiny iPhone screens, we bear witness to big events: roofs blow; scaffold falls; glass smashes; concrete cracks; washing machines fly. Miraculously, no one is hurt. Two of our friends are swept under some railings, headed for the sea, but manage to hold on. We beg our mate Enno to leave her house on the front beach before it is too late. She protests, staying put until the very last minute, sharing on camera the moment that the debris-filled waves crash through her windows. She and her family find shelter at a friend’s. Our electricity goes, as does our water. We eat dried sausage and drink wine and worry about our children. The Observatory app tells us the worst is yet to come. We sit, eyes glued to our phones in disbelief.

By 3pm, the wind feels like it is starting to abate. The Observatory has got it wrong, we think. Emboldened by the signals of our in-built barometers, we open our doors and brave our balcony to take some photos and footage. Down below, some people have ventured out. We debate then quickly settle that it is the least-worst moment to go and check on our new house (we are set to move house shortly, 20 yards away and further back from the sea.) The rain still lashes. We don full length jackets and shoes and wade rapidly through village streets like rivers. At our imminent abode, we find a blocked drain and a flooded balcony. Other than that, it is dry as a bone. We bail out the water, remove the blockage and, feeling enlivened and buoyed up by the storm battering our bodies, continue a little further, searching foolishly for a ringside seat.

We make towards the former village school, built on a height above the back beach. There is a gap through the doorway at the top of the steps. Joe steals a look alongside two local men, who are shouting crazily to the sea as if someone is in it. Although we feel sure the wind has subsided, it is nearing high tide and, as we find out later, the storm surge has reached around four metres above chart datum. Two titanic waves overwhelm the wall in quick succession. I scream at Joe to get back. We run home, meek in our stupidity.

In the minute or two that it takes us to get back to the house, the WhatsApp pictures are pouring in. The subsequent waves have swallowed the front of the school and the doorway in which Joe stood only seconds before. Outside our window, the sea wall, our primary protector, is down in parts, the concrete beneath it cracking like an earthquake has hit. The causeway is a monumental hole, filling thirstily with sea water. Our building is shaking from its very foundations. We speak no words but somehow mutually agree to evacuate. We grab clothes, laptops, underwear and beer, closing the door behind us, stopping only to stick our heads through our downstairs neighbours’ window, advising them to do the same (they are too low down to see clearly the extent of the damage.) The evening passes slowly at a kind friend’s house, who feeds and waters us, as we survey the scene from their higher up terrace. It is utter carnage. Although the T10 is still in force, by around dusk, it feels safe to go outside again. Those villagers who still have houses, leave them to look on at those who have not. The school is smashed into pieces, scattered like a massive concrete jigsaw across the back beach. The golf course is a saltwater lake, o’erflowing with the flotsam and jetsam of Shek O life: tyres, fridges, surf boards and monumental amounts of plastic and polystyrene.

The wire fencing that separates the golf course from the Shek O Road is completely down, blocking the entire thoroughfare which is flooded from the golf course which is flooded from the sea. It floats full of so many fallen trees, their branches so intricately intertwined that they resemble the roots of one massive banyan tree. My flip-flopped feet sting, burning red from whatever is in the water that has engulfed our village. If the road is this bad so close to Shek O, we can’t imagine what it is like further along. We feel like we will be trapped here for days. We’ve seen enough. We go home to bed.

Our house is wet, but completely undamaged. Despite the heat and with no aircon or fans, we close our eyes and don’t stir until morning. We wake to news that the road is miraculously open. Some Shek O residents have toiled all night with hand tools and wire cutters, connecting us to the outside world again. The Thai restaurant was turned into a feeding station, providing well-earned sustenance to the local heroes as they hauled our village back to life.

Much of the water has drained from the golf course. A fleet of minibuses with seasoned drivers who know the roads well ferry hard-earning Hongkongers back to work in the city, while others stay behind to literally pick up the pieces. We go to the front beach to see how we can help.

Lurching from the sand, the sturdy, 6m concrete lifeguard towers bend forward, as if craving mercy from the sea. Fronts of houses have been blasted off, insides filled up like massive sand pits. Belongings are lost, but not lives. The smell of raw sewage, rotten fish and goodness knows what else abounds. We fear rats and mosquitoes underfoot. We try to help our friends Enno and Geoff to forge a path to their front door through the debris, but we are told it is too dangerous to proceed without machinery. My husband takes some pictures for the news agency he works for. We return home again.

Later that afternoon, my husband and I go back to work. My colleagues board a flight to Bangkok. We pick up our children and travel by ferry and MTR and bus. It is almost as if nothing has happened. But it has. Things are different. Quieter. Simpler. In perspective. Our bodies are shell shocked and shaky, the adrenaline slowly beginning to subside. But something has been lost, something beyond the physical. That what we loved of Shek O is temporarily on hold: our children can no longer play safely outside; they can no longer swim freely in a sea filled with effluent.

But life literally goes on. Other people in other places, like the Philippines, are not so lucky. On Monday (tomorrow as you read this), our children will gather at the local Tin Hau Temple, built for the Goddess of the Sea, and give mooncake to the village elders in commemoration of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Thousands will flock to Shek O Beach in the evening with lanterns to celebrate the harvest and honour the moon… Before I write this piece, I pop down to what’s left of the Back Beach Bar for some inspiration. Ben was right. Last Saturday night was its swan song. But people are still gathered on makeshift stools drinking beer and sharing typhoon stories amongst the rubble. My father-in-law’s mural is still relatively intact, except for a few lost paint patches here and there, the gable wall it adorns standing tall where others have fallen. I WhatsApp my mother-in-law, who is half-Chinese, to tell her the good news. ‘That’s wonderful’, she messages back. “Gonggong (the Chinese name for grandfather that my children use) will come down soon and touch it up with Calla. Its survival is an auspicious sign for our family,’ she says. It certainly feels that way.