“It happened as quick as lightning, but it only took seconds to create so much destruction.”
Michael Lau, now 63, speaks with a slight tremor as he describes how he witnessed one of the most deadly landslides to occur in Hong Kong in the past 50 years.
On a warm day back in June 1972, a then 13-year-old Lau, who lived on the second floor of a public housing estate in the Sau Mau Ping neighbourhood, was unable to play his usual table tennis outside with friends due to the heavy rain.
“Instead, I went out on the balcony where we lived,” he recalls. “All of a sudden, opposite to me, I saw rooftops flying around as the landslide was coming down the nearby hill. Houses were sliding down the slope together with the mud.”
Lau was speechless with shock. “I just remember seeing people’s hands rising out of the mud. They were covered in blood. They raised their hands because they wanted people to help them. There were cars floating along in the landslide too. People were trying to dig them out.”
In total, 71 people were killed by the landslide that day, including many children. Lau and his family survived, but many people he knew were not as fortunate. “All the friends that I used to play table tennis with were all killed in the landslide,” says Lau. Today the disaster site is home to the Sau Mau Ping Memorial Park, a collection of benches at the foot of a hillside surrounded by nearby high-rise housing estates.
