Hong Kong reopens after Super Typhoon Ragasa, Taiwan revises death toll
Super Typhoon Ragasa brought Hong Kong to a standstill after sweeping through northern Philippines and Taiwan.
Damage to a seaside restaurant is seen in Tseung Kwan O after Super Typhoon Ragasa hit Hong Kong on Sep 24, 2025. (Photo: AFP/Leung Man Hei)
HONG KONG: Hong Kong on Thursday (Sep 25) resumed flights and reopened businesses, transportation services and some schools after being lashed by Super Typhoon Ragasa, while Taiwan revised its death toll from the cyclone down to 14.
Ragasa brought Hong Kong to a standstill from Tuesday afternoon, after sweeping through the northern Philippines and Taiwan, before making landfall on the southern Chinese city of Yangjiang on Wednesday.
More than 100 people were injured in Hong Kong, where authorities imposed the highest typhoon signal 10 for most of Wednesday.
On Thursday, the city's observatory maintained its second-lowest typhoon signal 3, keeping kindergartens and some schools shut as Ragasa moved away and weakened into a tropical storm.
Huge waves crashed over areas of Hong Kong's eastern and southern shoreline on Wednesday, with widespread flooding submerging some roads and residential properties.
Seawater surged through the Fullerton hotel on the island's south, shattering glass doors and inundating the lobby. No injuries were reported, and the hotel said services were operating as normal.
Hong Kong's Airport Authority said airlines would gradually resume flights starting from 6am on Thursday, with all three runways operating simultaneously.
"It is anticipated that flights will be scheduled until late into late night tomorrow, handling over 1,000 flights at the normal level," it said, adding that it expected airport operations to be busy on Thursday and Friday.
Authorities said they were urgently repairing collapsed roads, trying to clear more than 1,000 fallen trees and respond to around 85 cases of flooding.
TAIWAN REVISES DOWN DEATH TOLL
Taiwan's fire department on Thursday adjusted the typhoon's death toll to 14, after putting it at 17 the previous day, saying some casualties had been counted twice.
The deaths happened after Ragasa brought heavy rain to the eastern Hualien county, causing a barrier lake in the mountains to overflow and unleash a wall of water onto the small town of Guangfu.
The fire department put the new number of missing at 33, a figure that had hit 152 on Wednesday, as the government searches for people reported out of contact.
Taiwan, which had been lashed by Ragasa since Monday, normally has a well-oiled disaster mechanism that averts mass casualties by moving people out of potential danger zones quickly.
But many residents in Guangfu said there was insufficient warning when the barrier lake overflowed.
Lamen Panay, a Hualien councillor, said government evacuation requests before the flood had not been mandatory.
Referring to guidance for people to head to higher floors, she said: "What we were facing wasn't something 'vertical evacuation' could resolve."
Premier Cho Jung-tai on Wednesday called for an inquiry into what went wrong with evacuation orders.
