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Submitted by RenoTommy on Tue, 2012-02-14 11:44

Has Hong Kong ever suffered from a devastating (with high number casualties) earthquake or tsunami?

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Submitted by tngan on Tue, 2012-02-14 12:37.

Hi there,

Not big earthquakes nor tsunamis so far.  Previous known natural disasters happened locally had primarily been of typhoon and landslides.  As far as I could recall the most severe earthquake that had affected Hong Kong had been one of those in the 1960's.  It was up to magnitude 4 something of some scale, but I could not recall the details.  

Best Regards,

T

Submitted by breskvar on Tue, 2012-02-14 13:42.

According to the Observatory website, there were typhoons with large numbers of casualties in 1906 and 1937.  I think there was one in 1874 mentioned somewhere on this site.  The damage was substantial and in 1937 there was a storm surge that went up to 20ft in Tolo Harbour, killing thousands.

Some links to the 1937 typhoon: http://gwulo.com/node/9967

HK Observatory record of No. 10 typhoon signals hoisted since 1946 with casualtiy numbers: http://www.weather.gov.hk/informtc/historical_tc/metinfo_wind.htm

Some documents that talk more deeply about typhoons:

http://www.hko.gov.hk/publica/gen_pub/WeatheringTheStorm-2.pdf

http://www.wind.arch.t-kougei.ac.jp/info_center/APECwind/hongkong2.pdf

 

Submitted by tngan on Tue, 2012-02-14 14:39.

Hi there,

Found this documents published in 1991 with earthquake information of the area.  

Best Regards,

T 

Submitted by RenoTommy on Tue, 2012-02-14 15:47.

I believe it was in 1967.  The reason I remember, my aunt from San Francisco was visiting us in North Point.  That was her 1st trip back to HK since she immigrated to the USA in the 1930s.  The quake shook her out the bed and we laughed and said, "Gee, you brought the quake with you too?"  She had to endure the tear gas due to the constant riots, and the nerve wrecking home made bombs.  She eventually left a week early.

Somehow, I just checked with documents presented by other posters and I failed to find the 1967 quake.   I am sure that it did happen and it happened in a summer night, quite late.