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| Typhoon Higos (the giant white swirl) was over Hong Kong last night |
Typhoon Higos paid Hong Kong a visit last night, coming closest to the city around 2am when the local observatory raised the typhoon signal from T8 to T9. It went back down to T8 at 7.40am and then T3 just after 11am.
Usually we can see typhoons coming days away leaving much speculation about what time it will come closest to Hong Kong and more importantly, will we have a day off.
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| Tap Mun, or Grass Island in perfect conditions for camping |
As a result most people were safely indoors -- except for a 38-year-old man and his 70-year-old mother -- who were out camping!
They were on a remote islet called Tap Mun (Grass Island) when they called at 7am on Friday morning while T9 was in force, asking to be rescued after all their belongings had blown away.
Both were uninjured, but the mother was diagnosed with hypothermia.
At first the police sought help from the Government Flying Service to airlift the woman to hospital, but the helicopter could not be deployed because of bad weather. Therefore a rescue team had to hike in typhoon conditions to find them.
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| The 70-year-old woman who was rescued had hypothermia |
The man apparently went camping on Friday and had no mobile signal so he was completely unaware of the typhoon coming, while his mother joined him on Tuesday, though it is not clear at what time.
The wind gusts overnight in Tap Mun ranged from 71km/h to as high as 101km/h.
What was that man doing camping when the weather was turning bad? And for his mother to join him? Unbelievable.
We can only hope she recovers and her son learns a lesson not to drag her out camping during a typhoon! Hope he paid for the rescue because people literally risked their lives to get them to safety when they should not have been out at all.
