Hong Kong is definitely not in good place, as it struggles to get back on its feet. The city got devastated by the monster storm over the weekend, resulting in damaged properties and impassable roads.
According to South China Morning Post, the city's leader was congratulating rescue and emergency personnel for being able to avoid serious casualties. But despite, she was still under fire for undermining the commuter chaos on Monday due to the widespread destruction brought by typhoon Mangkhut. The latter is considered the metro's strongest typhoon to date.
Officials and utility companies all appealed for public understanding as they try to battle time for repairing tracks, power lines, ferry piers, and even 170 sets of damaged traffic lights. The storm also toppled about 1,500 trees, all of which are currently blocking critical transport channels.
"Our current goal is to get the clearing-up work done in most main routes by 5am," transport commissioner Mable Chan said. She also mentioned that smaller roads and certain routes in the North and Sai Kung districts would take more time.
"We hope to get all the clearing work done in the next one to two days."
More than 13,500 households and businesses, mainly in the remote, rural areas of New Territories North, Yuen Long and Sai Kung, were still waiting for the restoration of power supplies, Yahoo! News reports. In addition, there are at least 40,000 customers who are suffering from blackouts and power interruption when the storm came.
Power utility CLP revealed that access to most of the affected areas was blocked by debris and fallen; hence, repair works are extremely difficult to make.
The Education Bureau of Hong Kong, on the other hand, announced that schools and kindergartens would remain closed on Tuesday.
Open University, Chinese University, Education University, University of Science and Technology, Baptist University and the Vocational Training Council announced they would resume classes on Tuesday. Classes at Shue Yan University were due to resume on Wednesday as access to its Braemar Hill campus remained blocked.
Railway tracks and facilities along all of the MTR Corporation's nine lines were either damaged or impassable, causing massive commuter congestion and chaos at stations during rush hours. Crippled train services were just limping back to normal on the East Rail Line on Monday night.
"It was no picnic that the [East Rail] line could resume limited services in the morning [on Monday]," MTR chief of operations engineering Tony Lee Ka-yun said.
