When a wall collapsed in heavy rain in Hong Kong in 1925, turning seven buildings to rubble and killing 75
- Heavy rains caused a retaining wall to collapse behind a residential block in a hilly area of Hong Kong Island
- Seven buildings collapsed, and among the 75 dead was Chau Siu-ki, an ex-member of the Legislative Council
A retaining wall behind a residential block in Po Hing Fong, below Caine Road, gave way during heavy rains, and seven houses “were reduced to a heap of ruins”, the South China Morning Post reported on July 18, 1925. In one case, “when the retaining wall gave away, the ground floor was pushed outwards from the rear and the upper floors dropped through on the front of the block, cutting off all exits and reducing the houses [...] to a rubble heap”.
Rescuers immediately set to work digging for missing persons, estimated at about 200. “Among the first of the bodies to be recovered was that of Mr. Chau Siu-ki, a well known local businessman and an ex-member of the Legislative Council [...] He died shortly after removal to hospital,” the Post reported.
On July 20, the paper reported debris removal would take days, and there was “less possibility of any living persons remaining beneath the masses of rock”.
An inquiry opened a week after the collapse. The only eyewitness, Police Sergeant Carpenter, who saw the collapse from his veranda in the Caine Road Police Quarters, described “watching the water spouting up from a manhole in Caine Road [...] rising to a height of three feet”.
On July 28, the inquiry heard from engineer Edward Newhouse that “he was not aware until recently that water ever flowed across Caine Road when there was a heavy fall”, despite having been in charge of Hong Kong’s drainage matters for five years.
