22. Fortunately, although the telephone exchange at Fire Services Headquarters failed early in the emergency it was quickly repaired by Hong Kong Telephone Company workers and remained the only direct link between the public and the Fire Service for some 37 hours.
23. With the wholesale break-down of communications and the obviousness that the Colony was experiencing a major disaster, Fire Service units both on foot and on appliances were deployed to patrol all areas of potential danger to render assistance and relief to persons in peril. These sorties did sterling work and though, due to the intensity of pressure on the Service coupled with communication failures, it is impossible to precisely determine the number of incidents they attended, such accounting as is possible indicates that throughout the Colony during the 12th June Fire Service units rescued or led to safety no less than 931 persons.
24. Between 06.50 hours and 23.15 hours the Service received 110 calls for assistance at situations where persons were imperilled. Numerous other calls were received for assistance of a non-humani- tarian nature, i.e. flooding of basements and so on, but in view of the pressure on the Service no response could be made to these calls during the 12th and 13th June 1966.
25. The number of calls does not give a true picture of the pressure on the Service for two main reasons. Firstly, crews frequenily came upon and dealt with other incidents en-route to and from the addresses to which they had been originally despatched and were unable under the pressure and vicissitudes of time and weather to keep precise records of all these 'subsidiary' incidents. Secondly, many incidents involved rescue work stretching over many hours, thus consuming all reserve resources and denying personnel opportunities for rest and refresh- ment especially during the 24 hours ending midnight, 12th June 1966.
26. Notwithstanding that many appliances were bogged down on numerous occasions by mud and flood waters and by pressing into service every available vehicle on the Service's charge as emergency rescue units, as mentioned earlier in this report, no call for assistance where lives were at peril remained unanswered by the Service.
27. Simultaneously with the flooding of the Harcourt Road Fire Service complex, the Fire Service Workshops and Stores in the old Naval lands, Queen's Road, East were submerged to a depth of 4 to 6 feet and breached in several places by the flood waters. Several duty
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