August to Remember | How much has changed one year since Hato?

Photos by Renato Marques (MDT Archive)

Today marks exactly one year since one of the deadliest typhoons to ever have struck Macau made landfall in the city, leaving a scar on its people and communities.

The Signal No. 10 typhoon – the strongest of its kind under the former storm warning system – left 10 dead, more than 200 injured, and a trail of destruction in its wake. But Typhoon Hato was more than just a destructive tropical storm. Over a period of 48 hours, it exposed a dangerous apathy towards natural disasters and shed light on the government’s lack of preparation and accountability.

The 48 hours of confusion, chaos and extraordinary events were unprecedented in post- handover Macau’s history. Power blackouts and water shortages beset those who were fortunate enough to stay indoors. Those who had already left for their morning commute faced far worse, with falling trees, shattered glass and flooded car parks. The Macau garrison of the People’s Liberation Army even took to the streets for the first time.

In the 12 months that have passed since Hato, the sense of complacency has been replaced with fear and caution.

Jacky Ho, director of the Department of Innovative Social Work at City University of Macau, told the Times that the public’s awareness of the dangers of natural disasters has been heightened since Hato, but cautioned that this could be temporary and that a mild typhoon season this year could undo all that.

“Hato left a scar and, like a stress-response mechanism, people have become more cautious,” said Ho. “Generally speaking, there has been a change to the public’s perception of the dangers of typhoons, but I don’t know whether this will be a lasting change. Humans are designed to forget easily.”

“This year we have so far been very fortunate that the number and severity of the typhoons has been much lower than last year. My question is: if there is no major typhoon during the rest of the year, will the public forget by the next season?”

THE MORNING AFTER

Macau greeted the morning after Hato with a sense of solidarity and community. Whether organized by individuals, associations or corporations, groups of residents and non-residents banded together for city-wide cleanup projects. These groups went on to help undo the damage for several weeks and even months, strengthening the societal bonds between people from different backgrounds and different parts of the city.

Political commentator Larry So believes that the social bonds formed the morning after and in the subsequent weeks helped “to bring the people together” and “strengthen the bonds between [different] parts of society.”

Ho agrees, saying that in order to strengthen such community groups in preparation for future typhoon seasons, the government needs to step up its public education campaigns teaching people how to cope with natural disasters. He says an emphasis should be placed on how more able members of the community can care for vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the disabled. This helps disaster relief teams to focus on more critical cases and has been implemented with success in places like Taiwan and Japan.

“People in Taiwan or Japan are more prepared [than we were]. The governments have worked for a long time to disseminate information to the public about what to do in these situations, so that now even young children are aware. When … natural disasters occur, even the children instinctively know how to respond. But this requires continuous government communication.”

He gave an example of how a public education campaign might have alleviated the brief food and water shortage experienced in Hato’s aftermath, when supermarket shelves lay bare and people queued at fire hydrants to illegally siphon what water was available.

“The government can educate people that they don’t need to rush to the supermarket on the day of the typhoon,” said Ho. “They can stock up [on] water and other [dry] food products ahead of the typhoon season.”

Education campaigns might include an examination of the role of human activity in influencing climate change, how this affects the frequency and severity of natural disasters, and what can be done about it.

So said the events of August 23 certainly made people more focused on their immediate environment, but that this awareness remains at a local level and excludes broader concerns about climate change and recycling.

“In Macau, we are not so concerned with climate change and global warming,” he told the Times. “People are more concerned with the immediate environment. Typhoon Hato hasn’t changed our wider view on environmental issues – just look at plastic bag consumption in Macau. People don’t make the link between the wider environment and local disasters.”

But climate change is linked to the incidence of natural disasters in Macau.

The majority of environmental scientists agree that the incidence of record-breaking hot days is correlated with average global temperatures and say that as temperatures rise, so will the frequency and severity of tropical cyclones and other extreme weather events.

The day before Typhoon Hato, the city experienced its highest temperatures since 1930, with temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius detected at a weather station in Ka Ho, Coloane.

CONFIDENCE AND CAUTION

One year after Hato, the issue of accountability remains unresolved.

The former director of the Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG), Fong Soi Kun, bore the brunt of the accountability – leaving his governamental colleagues mostly unscatched – after his bureau was found to have made questionable decisions regarding the hoisting of typhoon signals.

The SMG raised signals significantly behind the equivalent authority in neighboring Hong Kong. Even though authorities knew about the powerful storm for several days, the SMG waited until 9 a.m. Wednesday morning to raise Signal No. 8, by which time much of the city had already left for work. In comparison, Hong Kong had raised its T8 warning nine hours earlier.

In the year since, the SMG has swapped its overconfidence for overcaution.

During the typhoon last Tuesday, the bureau raised the Signal No. 8 several hours in advance of the storm – and the public took notice.

However, So thinks the policy change won’t last. He told the Times that it was “natural for [the SMG] to be overcautious over last week’s typhoon, since it’s the first year since Hato. [However], eventually, they will become less cautious. I don’t expect this to be a lasting change.”

Either way, the government is determined not to be caught underprepared again.

Though it is yet to disclose the final budget, in the year since Hato, several public agencies have acquired a host of new  equipment to the tune of many millions.

Last month, the government unveiled new rescue equipment to increase the capacity of local disaster response teams, including maritime drones, a submarine robot controlled by cable, and several pieces of special diving equipment, such as underwater masks with communicator devices.

To prevent the control systems at the Ilha Verde Water Treatment Plant from being flooded again, Macao Water showcased its new seawater defenses this week, which are also designed to protect the critical water piping system.

As for the low-lying and vulnerable Inner Harbor area, which has been prone to flooding for many years, Typhoon Hato proved to be the catalyst for government action. Authorities proposed building a tidal barrier just a few weeks after Hato and promised that a final plan approved by the Central Government would be in place by the end of this year.

In other areas of governance, authorities have begun work on new legislation to prevent such a political crisis from reoccurring.

The most profound political change to arise from August 23 is the civil protection regime, which recently concluded its public consultation period and will be presented to the Legislative Assembly for deliberation shortly.

The new bill imposes stricter punishments on those who spread rumors or false information during periods of civil crisis, raising the maximum sentence from six months to three years. It comes in response to the case of two elderly residents who shared information via an internet- based messaging service that suggested the government was covering up deaths caused by Typhoon Hato. Daniel Beitler (text), Renato Marques (photos)