A series of extreme weather events occurred this year, including Super Typhoon Saola and the subsequent once-in-a-century rainstorm, which resulted in damage to E&M facilities in various districts and posed serious challenges to public services. Leveraging its extensive expertise and experience, the EMSD professional team stood united to proactively face emergencies with agility and rapid actions, successfully safeguarding these E&M facilities and public safety, and eventually helped restore normal operation of society in the shortest possible time, in demonstration of the spirit of “Serving the Community with Heart”.
In the event of an emergency in Hong Kong, such as severe weather and natural disasters, the EMSD activates its Emergency Control Centre (EMCC) to monitor the operation of major public E&M facilities in the territory around the clock. We had activated the EMCC and done thorough preparation to be braced for Super Typhoon Saola before its arrival on 1 September. For the first time, we adopted a dual-team duty model with two senior engineers and two engineers on duty simultaneously. Afterwards, in the late night of 7 September, the EMCC was swiftly activated again when the extremely heavy rainstorm hit unexpectedly under the black rainstorm signal. We kept in constant contact with various government departments and public organisations and co-ordinated the work among different teams within the EMSD then to immediately provide emergency services for the community and our clients, as well as urgently repairing damaged public facilities, in order to ensure the continual and safe functioning of E&M equipment.
While Super Typhoon Saola hit Hong Kong, more than 60 signalised traffic junctions was blacked out and over 100 traffic light facilities were damaged across the territory. The adverse weather posed considerable difficulties and challenges to the emergency repair works. On the day of the massive rainstorm, public facilities in various districts were flooded, so the EMSD promptly dispatched staff to pedestrian and vehicular underpasses to carry out repairs. Among them, a vehicular underpass at Winslow Street in Hung Hom was temporarily closed due to flooding, and the level of flood in the underpass had reached the chest of our staff then. Once the water was pumped away, our maintenance team entered the underpass and carried out emergency repairs to the facilities concerned. Consequently, the underpass was re-opened that night. Our team’s undaunted efforts and dedication enabled the swift completion of the emergency repair works.
The once-in-a-century rainstorm also heavily flooded the office and hangar of Kai Tak Division, Government Flying Service (GFS) due to backflow of rainwater. The EMSD immediately dispatched staff to the site to check out the situation and set about handling the affected facilities and addressing the issue of rainwater backflow. The adverse weather at the time resulted in traffic paralysis in multiple locations across Hong Kong, making our support work extremely challenging. Thanks to the abundant hands-on experience gained through the EMSD’s regular emergency drills, our team concertedly dealt with the emergencies with agility and solved the problems for the GFS, so that they could restore normal operation.
In addition, some government vehicles broke down as a result of severe road inundation in various districts brought by the extreme weather conditions. These vehicles were stranded on the roads, which affected the traffic. Owing to the large number of stranded vehicles, the contractors responsible for removing the vehicles had difficulty coping at first. Monitoring the situation carefully, we actively co-ordinated and shared the tasks with the contractors, so that the broken-down vehicles were moved to the EMSD’s depots for repair as soon as possible, and smooth road traffic was restored.